Third batch for 2.5 cycle

Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

Documentation/RelNotes/2.5.0.txt

@@ -29,6 +29,30 @@ UI, Workflows & Features
  * Tweak the sample "store" backend of the credential helper to honor
    XDG configuration file locations when specified.
 
+ * A heuristic to help the "git <cmd> <revs> <pathspec>" command line
+   convention to catch mistyped paths is to make sure all the non-rev
+   parameters in the later part of the command line are names of the
+   files in the working tree, but that means "git grep $str -- \*.c"
+   must always be disambiguated with "--", because nobody sane will
+   create a file whose name literally is asterisk-dot-see.  Loosen the
+   heuristic to declare that with a wildcard string the user likely
+   meant to give us a pathspec.
+
+ * "git merge FETCH_HEAD" learned that the previous "git fetch" could
+   be to create an Octopus merge, i.e. recording multiple branches
+   that are not marked as "not-for-merge"; this allows us to lose an
+   old style invocation "git merge <msg> HEAD $commits..." in the
+   implementation of "git pull" script; the old style syntax can now
+   be deprecated.
+
+ * Help us to find broken test script that splits the body part of the
+   test by mistaken use of wrong kind of quotes.
+   (merge d93d5d5 jc/test-prereq-validate later to maint).
+
+ * Developer support to automatically detect broken &&-chain in the
+   test scripts is now turned on by default.
+   (merge 92b269f jk/test-chain-lint later to maint).
+
 
 Performance, Internal Implementation, Development Support etc.
 
@@ -60,6 +84,13 @@ Performance, Internal Implementation, Development Support etc.
    to read packed-refs file revealed that the former is unacceptably
    inefficient.
 
+ * The refs API uses ref_lock struct which had its own "int fd", even
+   though the same file descriptor was in the lock struct it contains.
+   Clean-up the code to lose this redundant field.
+
+ * Add the "--allow-unknown-type" option to "cat-file" to allow
+   inspecting loose objects of an experimental or a broken type.
+
  * Many long-running operations show progress eye-candy, even when
    they are later backgrounded.  Hide the eye-candy when the process
    is sent to the background instead.
@@ -156,6 +187,55 @@ notes for details).
    directory, instead of refusing to run.
    (merge 0615173 jc/diff-no-index-d-f later to maint).
 
+ * "git rebase -i" moved the "current" command from "todo" to "done" a
+   bit too prematurely, losing a step when a "pick" did not even start.
+   (merge 8cbc57c ph/rebase-i-redo later to maint).
+
+ * The connection initiation code for "ssh" transport tried to absorb
+   differences between the stock "ssh" and Putty-supplied "plink" and
+   its derivatives, but the logic to tell that we are using "plink"
+   variants were too loose and falsely triggered when "plink" appeared
+   anywhere in the path (e.g. "/home/me/bin/uplink/ssh").
+   (merge baaf233 bc/connect-plink later to maint).
+
+ * "git stash pop/apply" forgot to make sure that not just the working
+   tree is clean but also the index is clean. The latter is important
+   as a stash application can conflict and the index will be used for
+   conflict resolution.
+   (merge ed178ef jk/stash-require-clean-index later to maint).
+
+ * We have prepended $GIT_EXEC_PATH and the path "git" is installed in
+   (typically "/usr/bin") to $PATH when invoking subprograms and hooks
+   for almost eternity, but the original use case the latter tried to
+   support was semi-bogus (i.e. install git to /opt/foo/git and run it
+   without having /opt/foo on $PATH), and more importantly it has
+   become less and less relevant as Git grew more mainstream (i.e. the
+   users would _want_ to have it on their $PATH).  Stop prepending the
+   path in which "git" is installed to users' $PATH, as that would
+   interfere the command search order people depend on (e.g. they may
+   not like versions of programs that are unrelated to Git in /usr/bin
+   and want to override them by having different ones in /usr/local/bin
+   and have the latter directory earlier in their $PATH).
+   (merge a0b4507 jk/git-no-more-argv0-path-munging later to maint).
+
+ * core.excludesfile (defaulting to $XDG_HOME/git/ignore) is supposed
+   to be overridden by repository-specific .git/info/exclude file, but
+   the order was swapped from the beginning. This belatedly fixes it.
+   (merge 099d2d8 jc/gitignore-precedence later to maint).
+
+ * After "git add -N", the path appeared in output of "git diff HEAD"
+   and "git diff --cached HEAD", leading "git status" to classify it
+   as "Changes to be committed".  Such a path, however, is not yet to
+   be scheduled to be committed.  "git diff" showed the change to the
+   path as modification, not as a "new file", in the header of its
+   output.
+
+   Treat such paths as "yet to be added to the index but Git already
+   know about them"; "git diff HEAD" and "git diff --cached HEAD"
+   should not talk about them, and "git diff" should show them as new
+   files yet to be added to the index.
+   (merge d95d728 nd/diff-i-t-a later to maint).
+
  * Code cleanups and documentation updates.
    (merge 0269f96 mm/usage-log-l-can-take-regex later to maint).
    (merge 64f2589 nd/t1509-chroot-test later to maint).
@@ -164,3 +244,4 @@ notes for details).
    (merge 846e5df pt/xdg-config-path later to maint).
    (merge 1154aa4 jc/plug-fmt-merge-msg-leak later to maint).
    (merge 319b678 jk/sha1-file-reduce-useless-warnings later to maint).
+   (merge 9a35c14 fg/document-commit-message-stripping later to maint).