Git for Windows v2.31.1 Release Notes

Latest update: March 27th 2021

Introduction

These release notes describe issues specific to the Git for Windows release. The release notes covering the history of the core git commands can be found in the Git project.

See http://git-scm.com/ for further details about Git including ports to other operating systems. Git for Windows is hosted at https://gitforwindows.org/.

Known issues

On Windows 10 before 1703, or when Developer Mode is turned off, special permissions are required when cloning repositories with symbolic links, therefore support for symbolic links is disabled by default. Use git clone -c core.symlinks=true <URL> to enable it, see details here.
If configured to use Plink, you will have to connect with putty first and accept the host key.
Some console programs, most notably non-MSYS2 Python, PHP, Node and OpenSSL, interact correctly with MinTTY only when called through winpty (e.g. the Python console needs to be started as winpty python instead of just python).
If you specify command-line options starting with a slash, POSIX-to-Windows path conversion will kick in converting e.g. "/usr/bin/bash.exe" to "C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\bash.exe". When that is not desired -- e.g. "--upload-pack=/opt/git/bin/git-upload-pack" or "-L/regex/" -- you need to set the environment variable MSYS_NO_PATHCONV temporarily, like so:

MSYS_NO_PATHCONV=1 git blame -L/pathconv/ msys2_path_conv.cc

Alternatively, you can double the first slash to avoid POSIX-to-Windows path conversion, e.g. "//usr/bin/bash.exe".
Windows drives are normally recognized within the POSIX path as /c/path/to/dir/ where /c/ (or appropriate drive letter) is equivalent to the C:\ Windows prefix to the \path\to\dir. If this is not recognized, revert to the C:\path\to\dir Windows style.
Git for Windows will not allow commits containing DOS-style truncated 8.3-format filenames ending with a tilde and digit, such as mydocu~1.txt. A workaround is to call git config core.protectNTFS false, which is not advised. Instead, add a rule to .gitignore to ignore the file(s), or rename the file(s).
Many Windows programs (including the Windows Explorer) have problems with directory trees nested so deeply that the absolute path is longer than 260 characters. Therefore, Git for Windows refuses to check out such files by default. You can overrule this default by setting core.longPaths, e.g. git clone -c core.longPaths=true ....
Some commands are not yet supported on Windows and excluded from the installation.
As Git for Windows is shipped without Python support, git p4 (which is backed by a Python script) is not supported.
The Quick Launch icon will only be installed for the user running setup (typically the Administrator). This is a technical restriction and will not change.
Older versions of the Windows Explorer do not calculate Git for Windows' on-disk size correctly, as it is unaware of hard links. Therefore, it might look like Git for Windows takes up 1.5GB when in reality it is about a third of that.
Git command hints are designed for a POSIX shell, this can lead to issues when using them as is in non-POSIX shells like PowerShell, such as this ticket.
When pushing via the git:// protocol, Git for Windows may hang indefinitely. The last console output in this case is typically Writing objects: 100%. Until issue #907 is addressed, run this command once as a work-around: git config sendpack.sideband false.
Git for Windows executables linked to msys-2.0.dll are not compatible with Mandatory ASLR and may crash if system-wide Mandatory ASLR is enabled in Windows Exploit protection. A workaround is to disable ASLR for all executables in C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin, run in administrator powershell (replace $_.Name with $_ to use full path to executable instead of name):

Get-Item -Path "C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\*.exe" | %{ Set-ProcessMitigation -Name $_.Name -Disable ForceRelocateImages }

Alternatively, you can disable Mandatory ASLR completely in Windows Exploit protection.

Should you encounter other problems, please first search the bug tracker (also look at the closed issues) and the mailing list, chances are that the problem was reported already. Also make sure that you use an up to date Git for Windows version (or a current snapshot build). If it has not been reported, please follow our bug reporting guidelines and report the bug.

Licenses

Git is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2.

Git for Windows also contains Embedded CAcert Root Certificates. For more information please go to https://www.cacert.org/policy/RootDistributionLicense.php.

This package contains software from a number of other projects including Bash, zlib, curl, tcl/tk, perl, MSYS2 and a number of libraries and utilities from the GNU project, licensed under the GNU General Public License. Likewise, it contains Perl which is dual licensed under the GNU General Public License and the Artistic License.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.31.1 (March 27th 2021)

New Features

Comes with cURL v7.76.0.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.31.0 (March 15th 2021)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.31.1.
Comes with GNU Privacy Guard v2.2.27.
Comes with OpenSSL v1.1.1k.
Comes with Git LFS v2.13.3.

Bug Fixes

It is now possible to execute the Windows Store version of python3.exe from Git Bash.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.30.2 (March 9th 2021)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.31.0.
Comes with OpenSSH v8.5p1.
Comes with tig v2.5.3.
Git for Windows now ships with an experimental built-in file-system monitor, without the need to install Watchman and setting core.fsmonitor. It can be turned on by setting both feature.manyFiles=true and feature.experimental=true (or directly, via core.useBuiltinFSMonitor=true).
Comes with Git Credential Manager Core v2.0.394.50751.
Comes with GNU TLS v3.7.1.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.30.1 (February 9th 2021)

This version addresses CVE-2021-21300 (a bug that allows code injection during a clone from an untrusted source).

New Features

Comes with Git v2.30.2.
Comes with PCRE2 v10.36.
Comes with tig v2.5.2.
Comes with OpenSSL v1.1.1j.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.30.0(2) (January 14th 2021)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.30.1.
Comes with Perl v5.32.1.
Comes with cURL v7.75.0.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.30.0 (December 28th 2020)

This version includes Git LFS v2.13.2, addressing CVE-2021-21237.

New Features

Comes with Git Credential Manager Core v2.0.318.44100.
Comes with Git LFS v2.13.2.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.29.2(3) (December 8th 2020)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.30.0.
Comes with OpenSSL v1.1.1i.
Comes with cURL v7.74.0.
Comes with Git LFS v2.13.1.
Notepad and Wordpad are now supported as editors without manual configuration.

Bug Fixes

The auto-updater now shows the progress while installing.
The credential-helper selector (which is the default credential helper in the Portable version of Git for Windows) now handles paths with spaces correctly.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.29.2(2) (November 4th 2020)

This version updates Git Credential Manager Core to address CVE-2020-26233.

New Features

Comes with GNU Privacy Guard v2.2.25.
Comes with Git Credential Manager Core v2.0.289.48418.

Bug Fixes

Beyond Compare 4 can be configured as difftool bc4 again.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.29.2 (October 30th 2020)

This version includes a new Git LFS version to fix CVE-2020-27955.

New Features

Comes with Git Credential Manager Core v2.0.280.19487.
Comes with Git LFS v2.12.1.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.29.1 (October 23rd 2020)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.29.2.

Bug Fixes

The recent regression where OpenSSH's copy-ssh-id failed to work correctly, was fixed.
A regression preventing /usr/bin/update-ca-trust from working was fixed.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.29.0 (October 19th 2020)

Important note: v2.29.0 and v2.29.1 upgrade existing users of Git Credential Manager for Windows (which was just deprecated) to Git Credential Manager Core ("GCM Core", which is the designated successor of the former). This is necessary because GitHub deprecated password-based authentication and intends to remove support for it soon, and GCM Core is prepared for this change.

Also, as of v2.29.0, the option to override the branch name used by git init for the initial branch is featured prominently in the installer.

New Features

Comes with Git v2.29.1.
The MSYS2 runtime now optionally supports creating Cygwin-style symbolic links (via setting the environment variable MSYS=winsymlinks:sysfile).

Changes since Git for Windows v2.28.0 (July 28th 2020)

This version upgrades existing users of Git Credential Manager for Windows (which was just deprecated) to Git Credential Manager Core ("GCM Core", which is the designated successor of the former). This is necessary because GitHub deprecated password-based authentication and intends to remove support for it soon, and GCM Core is prepared for this change.

Also, the option to override the branch name used by git init for the initial branch is now featured prominently in the installer.

New Features

Comes with Git v2.29.0.
Comes with MSYS2 runtime (Git for Windows flavor) based on Cygwin 3.1.7.
Comes with Git LFS v2.12.0.
Comes with GNU Privacy Guard v2.2.23.
Comes with OpenSSL v1.1.1h.
Comes with libcbor v0.8.0.
Comes with libfido2 v1.5.0.
Comes with OpenSSH v8.4p1.
Comes with Git Credential Manager Core v2.0.252.766.
Existing Git Credential Manager for Windows users are now automatically upgraded to Git Credential Manager Core.
Git for Windows' installer learned to let users override the default branch used by git init.
The installer size was reduced by dropping a couple unneeded .dll files.
Comes with cURL v7.73.0.

Bug Fixes

The credential helper selector (used as default credential helper in the Portable Git) now persists the users choice correctly again.
The full command-lines of MSYS2 processes (such as cp.exe) spawned from Git's Bash can now be seen in sysmon, wmic etc by default.
A bug preventing Unicode characters from being used in the window title of Git Bash was fixed.
OpenSSH was patched to no longer warn about an "invalid format" when private and public keys are stored separately.
Non-ASCII output of paged Git commands is now rendered correctly in Windows Terminal.
It is now possible to use wordpad.exe as Git's editor of choice.
When using Git via the "Run As..." function, it now uses the correct home directory.
The Git Bash prompt now works even after calling set -u.
Git for Windows can now be installed even with stale AutoRun registry entries (e.g. left-overs from a Miniconda installation).

Changes since Git for Windows v2.27.0 (June 1st 2020)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.28.0.
Comes with subversion v1.14.0.
Comes with the designated successor of Git Credential Manager for Windows (GCM for Windows), the cross-platform Git Credential Manager Core. For now, this is opt-in, with the idea of eventually retiring GCM for Windows.
Comes with cURL v7.71.1.
Comes with Perl v5.32.0.
Comes with MSYS2 runtime (Git for Windows flavor) based on Cygwin 3.1.6 (including the improvements of Cygwin 3.1.5).
Comes with GNU Privacy Guard v2.2.21.

Bug Fixes

A typo was fixed in the installer.
The new git pull behavior option now records the fast-forward choice correctly.
In v2.27.0, git svn was broken completely, which has been fixed.
Some Git operations could end up with bogus modified symbolic links (where git status would report changes but git diff would not), which is now fixed.
When reinstalling (or upgrading) Git for Windows, the "Pseudo Console Support" choice is now remembered correctly.
Under certain circumstances, the Git Bash window (MinTTY) would crash frequently, which has been addressed.
When pseudo console support is enabled, the VIM editor sometimes had troubles accepting certain keystrokes, which was fixed.
Due to a bug, it was not possible to disable Pseudo Console support by reinstalling with the checkbox turned off, which has been fixed.
A bug with enabled Pseudo Console support, where git add -i would not quit the file selection mode upon an empty input, has been fixed.
The cleanup mode called "scissors" in git commit now handles CR/LF line endings correctly.
When cloning into an existing directory, under certain circumstances, the core.worktree option was set unnecessarily. This has been fixed.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.26.2 (April 20th 2020)

Due to a bug when handling symbolic links that was fixed in this version, git status will show symbolic links as modified even as git diff won't report any changes. The quickest work-around is to call git add -u which lets Git realize that nothing changed, actually.

This release comes with a Git Bash that optionally uses Windows-native pseudo consoles. Meaning: finally, Git Bash can accommodate console programs like node.exe, Python or PHP, without using the winpty helper (see Known Issues above). Note that this is still a very new feature and is therefore known to have some corner-case bugs.

New Features

Comes with Git v2.27.0.
Comes with OpenSSL v1.1.1g.
Comes with cURL v7.70.0.
Comes with subversion v1.13.0.
Comes with MSYS2 runtime (Git for Windows flavor) based on Cygwin 3.1.4.
The release notes have been made a bit more readable and are now linked from the Start Menu group.
The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) are now linked in a Start Menu item.
Comes with Git LFS v2.11.0.
Comes with OpenSSH v8.3p1.

Bug Fixes

Some Perl packages (e.g. Net::SSLeay) that had been broken recently have been fixed.
Git for Windows and WSL Git now have the same idea of symbolic links' length, i.e. git status will no longer mark them as modified in Git for Windows after checking them out in WSL.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.26.1 (April 9th 2020)

Yet another security fix release: With a crafted URL that contains a newline or empty host, or lacks a scheme, the credential helper machinery can be fooled into providing credential information that is not appropriate for the protocol in use and host being contacted (CVE-2020-11008).

New Features

Comes with Git v2.26.2.
Comes with tig v2.5.1.
Worktree updates (e.g. git checkout, git reset --hard) got a performance boost in sparse checkouts.

Bug Fixes

A recent regression in gitk that prevented it from running in bare repositories has been fixed.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.26.0 (March 23rd 2020)

This includes a fix for CVE-2020-5260.

New Features

Comes with Git v2.26.1.
Comes with OpenSSL v1.1.1f.

Bug Fixes

Git now accepts more date formats such as %g and %V.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.25.1 (February 19th 2020)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.26.0.
Git for Windows' OpenSSH now can use USB security tokens (e.g. Yubikeys).
The native Windows HTTPS backend (Secure Channel) has learned to work gracefully with Fiddler and corporate proxies.
Git for Windows' release notes have been made a bit easier to read/navigate.
The Free/Libre VSCodium version of Visual Studio Code is now also detected as an option for the default Git editor.
Comes with cURL v7.69.1.
Comes with OpenSSL v1.1.1e.
Comes with GNU Privacy Guard v2.2.20.

Bug Fixes

Git for Windows can now clone into directories the current user can write to, even if they lack permission to even read the parent directory.
When asking for a password via Git GUI, non-ASCII characters are now handled correctly.
git update-git-for-windows -y now is fully automatable.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.25.0 (January 13th 2020)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.25.1.
The Portable version of Git for Windows now defaults to turning on the FSCache just like the installer does.
Comes with Git LFS v2.10.0.
Portable Git can now be run from a RAM disk, too.
The deprecation of Git CMD has been reverted: the security issue (git show would execute a git executable or script in the current directory instead of the intended git.exe) was fixed already in v2.20.0.
Comes with OpenSSH v8.2p1.

Bug Fixes

Some corner-case bugs in the built-in git add -i were fixed.
The file name COM0 is no longer mistaken for a reserved file name.
The curl.exe included in Git for Windows can access SFTP/SSH hosts again.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.24.1(2) (December 10th 2019)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.25.0.
Comes with GNU Privacy Guard v2.2.19.
Comes with Git LFS v2.9.2.
When upgrading Git for Windows, by default the installer now only shows pages with previously-unseen options.
Comes with cURL v7.68.0.

Bug Fixes

The startup file for GNU nano, which had been included with DOS line endings (and therefore upset nano) is now included with Unix line endings again.
Git for Windows now fails as expected when trying to check out files with illegal characters in their file names.
Git now works properly when inside a symlinked work tree.
Repositories with old commits containing backslashes in file names can now be fetched/cloned again (but Git will still refuse to check out files with backslashes in their file names).
Git GUI can now deal with uninitialized submodules (this was a Windows-specific bug).
It is again possible to clone repositories where some past revision contained file names containing backslashes (Git will of course still refuse to check out such revisions).

Changes since Git for Windows v2.24.0(2) (November 6th 2019)

This is a security bug release that fixes CVE-2019-1348, CVE-2019-1349, CVE-2019-1350, CVE-2019-1351, CVE-2019-1352, CVE-2019-1353, CVE-2019-1354, CVE-2019-1387, and CVE-2019-19604.

New Features

Comes with Git v2.24.1.
Comes with tig v2.5.0.
Comes with patch level 4 of the MSYS2 runtime (Git for Windows flavor) based on Cygwin 3.0.7.
The command-line options of git-bash.exe are now documented (call git help git-bash).
Comes with Git LFS v2.9.1.
Comes with cURL v7.67.0.
Comes with GNU Privacy Guard v2.2.18.

Bug Fixes

MinGit no longer overrides an installed Git for Windows' system gitconfig.
The "Check daily for updates" feature uses the Action Center again.
When associating .sh files with Git Bash to allow running them by double-clicking them in the Windows Explorer, shell scripts with non-ASCII characters in their file name are now supported.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.24.0 (November 4th 2019)

Bug Fixes

Using http.extraHeader no longer results in spurious crashes.
The /proc/{stdin,stdout,stderr} pseudo-symlinks are now installed properly even with non-US locales.
A bug was fixed that prevented gitk from refreshing after new changes were committed.
A bug in cURL v7.67.0 that caused SSL_read: No error with some servers was fixed.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.23.0 (August 17th 2019)

Note! As a consequence of making git config --system work as expected, the location of the system config is now C:\Program Files\Git\etc\gitconfig (no longer split between C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64\etc\gitconfig and C:\ProgramData\Git\config), and likewise the location of the system gitattributes is now C:\Program Files\Git\etc\gitattributes (no longer C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64\etc\gitattributes). Any manual modifications to C:\ProgramData\Git\config need to be ported manually.

New Features

Comes with Git v2.24.0.
Comes with cURL v7.66.0.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.20.0.
Comes with OpenSSH v8.1p1.
Comes with OpenSSL v1.1.1d.
Comes with Git LFS v2.9.0.

Bug Fixes

The shell construct <(<command>), which was broken in v2.23.0 (/dev/fd/<n>: no such file or directory), was fixed.
The default config no longer skips git-lfs downloads.
Starting with cURL v7.66.0, $HOME/.netrc can be used instead of $HOME/_netrc (but it will still fall back to looking for the latter).
The installer's "ProductVersion" is now consistent with older Git for Windows versions'.
Makes git config --system work like you think it should.
The (still experimental) built-in git add -p no longer gets confused about incomplete lines (i.e. a file's l last line that does not end in a Line Feed).
A buffer overrun in the code to determine which files need to be marked as hidden was plugged.
The support for sendpack.sideband that was removed by mistake was re-introduced, to support git push via the git:// protocol again.
git stash no longer records skip-worktree files as deleted after resolving merge conflicts in them.
The Git for Windows installer no longer complains about a downgrade when upgrading from an -rc version, i.e. from a pre-release leading up to the next major version.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.22.0 (June 8th 2019)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.23.0.
Comes with patch level 3 of the MSYS2 runtime (Git for Windows flavor) based on Cygwin 3.0.7.
Comes with PCRE2 v10.33.
Comes with GNU Privacy Guard v2.2.17.
Comes with cURL v7.65.3.
Comes with Git LFS v2.8.0.
When configuring Git for Windows to use plink, there is now a checkbox specifically for TortoisePlink.
The FSCache feature is now used with git checkout and git reset in sparse checkouts.

Bug Fixes

Git for Windows' MSYS2 runtime was patched to fix a bug where setting the environment variable SHELL to an empty string in a shell script would not only fail to pass that setting to non-MSYS2 processes (such as git.exe) but also completely skip all environment variables that sort after said variable.
git clean -dfx no longer follows NTFS junction points (also known as mount points).
A workaround now allows cloning to certain network drives (e.g. Isilon).
Fixed CVE-2019-1211 in MinGit/Portable Git by being more careful about validating the Windows-wide config.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.21.0 (February 26th 2019)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.22.0.
The awk included in Git for Windows now includes extensions such as inplace.
The file/product version stored in the installer's .exe file now matches the version of the included git.exe file's.
Comes with OpenSSH v8.0p1.
Comes with Git LFS v2.7.2.
Comes with MSYS2 runtime (Git for Windows flavor) based on Cygwin v3.x (see release notes for Cygwin 3.0.0, 3.0.1, 3.0.2, 3.0.3, 3.0.4, 3.0.5, 3.0.6, and 3.0.7).
There are now experimental built-in versions of git add -i and git add -p, i.e. those modes are now a lot faster (in particular at startup). You can opt into using them on the last installer page.
PortableGit now comes with a meta credential helper, i.e. a GUI that lets the user choose which of the available credential helpers to use. This should help to avoid storing credentials on other people's machines when running portable Git from a thumb drive.
Comes with gawk v5.0.0.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.19.0.
Comes with git-flow v1.12.3.
Comes with OpenSSL v1.1.1c.
Comes with GNU Privacy Guard v2.2.16, specifically patched to handle Windows paths.
Comes with cURL v7.65.1.
Comes with Heimdal v7.5.0. -packages/pull/33).

Bug Fixes

Git for Windows' updater is now accessible, i.e. it can be read by a screen reader.
git update-git-for-windows (i.e. the auto updater of Git for Windows) now reports correctly when it failed to access the GitHub API.
Git for Windows' updater no longer runs into GitHub API rate limits (this used to be quite common in enterprise scenarios, where many users would share one IP as far as GitHub is concerned).
gitk no longer fails with "filename too long" when there are 1,000+ branches/tags.
A bug which on occasion caused lengthy rebase runs to crash without error message was fixed.
Two workarounds from the Git for Windows 1.x era (concerning reading credentials via GUI and fetching via git://) were considered obsolete.
git difftool --no-index can now be run outside of Git worktrees.
git rebase -i used to get confused when an exec command created new commits and then appended pick lines for them. This has been fixed.
During a run of git rebase --rebase-merges, the output of git status now shows label lines correctly, i.e. with the labels' names instead of the commit hash they point to.
We now avoid problems updating the commit graph when gc.writeCommitGraph=true.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.20.1 (December 15th 2018)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.21.0.
The custom editor setting in the installer has been improved substantially.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.18.4.0.
Comes with cURL v7.64.0.
Comes with git-flow v1.12.0.
git archive no longer requires gzip to generate .tgz archives (this means in particular that it works in MinGit).
System-wide Sublime Text installations are now detected and offered on the editor wizard page.
Comes with Git LFS v2.7.1.

Bug Fixes

The Git CMD deprecation was further clarified to mention that the Start Menu item is deprecated, not using Git from CMD.
Certain drivers/anti-malware caused git.exe to hang, which has been fixed.
git stash now works after staging files with git add -N.
A problem with difftool and more than a handful modified files has been fixed.
The regression where git-cmd <command> would not execute the command was fixed.
Portable Git can be launched via network paths again.
FSCache works again on network drives, in particular when Windows 8.1 or older are involved.
Partially hidden text in the Path options page in the installer is no longer hidden.
Fixes an obscure git svn hang.
The installer now configures editors so that the built-in rebase can use them.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.20.0 (December 10th 2018)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.20.1.
Comes with cURL v7.63.0.

Bug Fixes

Fixes a speed regression in the built-in rebase.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.19.2 (November 21st 2018)

Please note that Git for Windows v2.19.2 was offered as a full release only for about a week, and then demoted to "pre-release" status, as it had two rather big regressions: 32-bit Git Bash crashed, and git:// was broken.

New Features

Comes with Git v2.20.0.
Comes with OpenSSL v1.1.1a. The OpenSSH, cURL and Heimdal packages were rebuilt to make use of OpenSSL v1.1.1a.
The FSCache feature was further optimized in particular for very large repositories.
To appease certain anti-malware, MinTTY was recompiled with a patch to avoid GCC trampolines.
Comes with Git LFS v2.6.1.
Comes with Bash v4.4 patchlevel 023 .
Commands to interact with CVS repositories were considered obsolete and have been removed.
The desired HTTP version (HTTP/2 or HTTP/1.1) can now be configured via the http.version setting.

Bug Fixes

Git CMD no longer picks up git.exe from the current directory (if any).
Git Bash works again in 32-bit Git for Windows.
Git can now access git:// remotes again.
The confusing descriptions of the PATH options in the installer were clarified.
A bug in the notepad support in conjunction with line wrapping was fixed.
Comes two backported fixes to allow NTLM/Kerberos authentication to fall back to HTTP/1.1.
It is now possible to call cmd\git.exe via a symbolic link.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.19.1 (Oct 5th 2018)

The Git CMD start menu shortcut is deprecated and will be dropped in future version. Note that the deprecation only affects the shortcut; git-cmd.exe will continue to be distributed and installed.

New Features

Comes with Git v2.19.2.
Comes with OpenSSH v7.9p1.
The description of the editor option to choose Vim has been clarified to state that this unsets core.editor.
Comes with cURL v7.62.0.
The type of symlinks to create (directory or file) can now be specified via the .gitattributes.
The FSCache feature now uses a faster method to enumerate files, making e.g. git status faster in large repositories.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.18.3.
Comes with Git LFS v2.6.0.
Comes with MSYS2 runtime (Git for Windows flavor) based on Cygwin 2.11.2.
The FSCache feature was optimized to become faster.

Bug Fixes

The 64-bit Portable Git no longer sets pack.packSizeLimit.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.19.0 (September 11th 2018)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.19.1.
Comes with Git LFS v2.5.2.
When FSCache is enabled, commands such as add, commit, and reset are now much faster.
Sublime Text, Atom, and even the new user-specific VS Code installations can now be used as Git's default editor.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.18.0.

Bug Fixes

Several corner case bugs were fixed in the built-in rebase/stash commands.
An occasional crash in git gc (which had been introduced into v2.19.0) has been fixed.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.18.0 (June 22nd 2018)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.19.0.
There are now fast, built-in versions of git stash and git rebase, available as experimental options.
The included OpenSSH client now enables modern ciphers.
The gitweb component was removed because it is highly unlikely to be used on Windows.
The git archimport tool (which was probably used by exactly 0 users) is no longer included in Git for Windows.
Comes with tig v2.4.0.
Comes with Git LFS v2.5.1.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.17.1.
Comes with OpenSSL v1.0.2p.
Comes with cURL v7.61.1.
Comes with mingw-w64-nodejs v8.12.0.

Bug Fixes

The http.schannel.checkRevoke setting (which never worked) was renamed to http.schannelCheckRevoke. In the same run, http.schannel.useSSLCAInfo (which also did not work, for the same reason) was renamed to http.schannelUseSSLCAInfo.
Avoids a stack overflow with recent Windows Insider versions.
Git GUI now handles hooks correctly in worktrees other than the main one.
When using core.autocrlf, the bogus "LF will be replaced by CRLF" warning is now suppressed.
The funny fatal error -cmalloc would have returned NULL problems should be gone.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.17.1(2) (May 29th 2018)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.18.0.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.16.2.

Bug Fixes

The diff filter for .pdf files was fixed.
The start-ssh-agent.cmd script no longer overrides the HOME variable.
Fixes an issue where passing an argument with a trailing slash from Git Bash to git.exe was dropping that trailing slash.
The http.schannel.checkRevoke setting now really works.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.17.1 (May 29th 2018)

New Features

Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.16.1.
Comes with Git LFS v2.4.2.

Bug Fixes

This release really contains Git v2.17.1.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.17.0 (April 3rd 2018)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.17.1.
Comes with Perl v5.26.2.
The installer now offers VS Code Insiders as option for Git's default editor if it is installed.
The vim configuration was modernized.
Comes with cURL v7.60.0.
Certain errors, e.g. when pushing failed due to a non-fast-forwarding change, are now colorful.
Comes with Git LFS v2.4.1.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue with recursive clone (CVE 2018-11235).
Aliases that expand to shell commands can now take arguments containing curly brackets.
Ctrl+C is now handled in Git Bash in a sophisticated way: it emulates the way Ctrl+C is handled in Git CMD, but in a fine-grained way.
Based on the the new Ctrl+C handling in Git Bash, pressing Ctrl+C while git log is running will only stop Git from traversing the commit history, but keep the pager running.
Git was fixed to work correctly in Docker volumes inside Windows containers.
Tab completion of git status -- <partial-path> is now a lot faster.
Git for Windows now creates directory symlinks correctly when asked to.
The option to disable revocation checks with Secure Channel which was introduced in v2.16.1(2) now really works.
Git no longer enters an infinite loop when misspelling git status as, say, git Status.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.16.3 (March 23rd 2018)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.17.0.
Comes with OpenSSL v1.0.2o.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.15.2.
Comes with OpenSSH v7.7p1.

Bug Fixes

When git.exe is called with an invalid subcommand, it no longer complains about file handles.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.16.2 (February 20th 2018)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.16.3.
When choosing to "Use Git from the Windows Command Prompt" (i.e. add only the minimal set of Git executables to the PATH), and when choosing the Git LFS component, Git LFS is now included in that minimal set. This makes it possible to reuse Git for Windows' Git LFS, say, from Visual Studio.
Comes with gawk v4.2.1.
In conjunction with the FSCache feature, git checkout is now a lot faster when checking out a lot of files.
Comes with Git LFS v2.4.0.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.15.0.
Comes with cURL v7.59.0.
The Git for Windows SDK can now be "installed" via git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/git-for-windows/git-sdk-64.
The tar utility (included as a courtesy, not because Git needs it) can now unpack .tar.xz archives.

Bug Fixes

When a TERM is configured that Git for Windows does not know about, Bash no longer crashes.
The regression where gawk stopped treating Carriage Returns as part of the line endings was fixed.
When Git asks for credentials via the terminal in a Powershell window, it no longer fails to do so.
The installer is now more robust when encountering files that are in use (and can therefore not be overwritten right away).
The included find and rm utilities no longer have problems with deeply nested directories on FAT drives.
The cygpath utility included in Git for Windows now strips trailing slashes when normalizing paths (just like the Cygwin version of the utility; this is different from how MSYS2 chooses to do things).
The certificates of HTTPS proxies configured via http.proxy are now validated against the ca-bundle.crt correctly.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.16.1(4) (February 7th 2018)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.16.2.
For every new Git for Windows version, .zip archives containing .pdb files for some of Git for Windows' components are now published alongside the new version.
Comes with MSYS2 runtime (Git for Windows flavor) based on Cygwin 2.10.0; This required rebuilding OpenSSH, Perl (and some Perl modules) and Subversion.
Comes with Bash v4.4 patchlevel 019 .

Bug Fixes

The Perl upgrade in Git for Windows v2.16.1(4) broke interactive authentication of git svn, which was fixed.
When configuring HTTPS transport to use Secure Channel, we now refrain from configuring http.sslCAInfo. This also helps Git LFS (which uses Git for Windows' private http.sslCAInfo setting) to use the same credentials as git fetch and git push.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.16.1(3) (February 6th 2018)

Bug Fixes

When called from TortoiseGit, git.exe can now spawn processes again.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.16.1(2) (February 2nd 2018)

New Features

Git for Windows' SDK packages are now hosted on Azure Blobs, fixing part of issue #1479.
Comes with perl-Net-SSLeay v1.84.

Bug Fixes

When http.sslBackend is not configured (e.g. in portable Git or MinGit), fetch/push operations no longer crash.
On Windows 7 and older, Git for Windows v2.16.1(2) was no longer able to spawn any processes (e.g. during fetch/clone). This regression has been fixed.
The Perl upgrade in v2.16.1(2) broke git send-email; This has been fixed by updating the Net-SSLeay Perl module.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.16.1 (January 22nd 2018)

New Features

Comes with Heimdal v7.5.0.
Comes with cURL v7.58.0.
Comes with Perl v5.26.1.
When using GNU nano as Git's default editor, it is now colorful (shows syntax-highlighting).
Comes with tig v2.3.3.
When using Secure Channel as HTTPS transport behind a proxy, it may be necessary to disable revocation checks, which is now possible.
Comes with BusyBox v1.28.0pre.16550.0b3cdd76c.

Bug Fixes

When Git spawns processes, now only the necessary file handles are inherited from the parent process, possibly preventing file locking issues.
The git update command has been renamed to git update-git-for-windows to avoid confusion where users may think that git update updates their local repository or worktree.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.16.0(2) (January 18th 2018)

This is a hotfix release, based on upstream Git's hotfix to address a possible segmentation fault associated with case-insensitive file systems.

Note: another hotfix might be coming the day after tomorrow, as cURL announced a new version addressing security advisories that might affect how Git talks via HTTP/HTTPS, too.

New Features

Comes with Git v2.16.1.

Bug Fixes

A set of regressions introduced by patches intended to speed up reset and checkout was fixed (issues #1437, #1438, #1440 and #1442).

Changes since Git for Windows v2.15.1(2) (November 30th 2017)

Git for Windows now has a new homepage: https://gitforwindows.org/ (it is still graciously hosted by GitHub, but now much quicker to type).

New Features

Comes with Git v2.16.0.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.14.0.
The Git for Windows installer now offers to configure Visual Studio Code as default editor for Git.
Comes with OpenSSL v1.0.2n.
git checkout is now a lot faster when checking out a lot of files.
The core.excludesfile can now reference a symbolic link.
Comes with patch level 7 of the MSYS2 runtime (Git for Windows flavor) based on Cygwin 2.9.0.
With lots of files, git reset --hard is now a lot faster when the FSCache feature is in effect.

Bug Fixes

When cloning into an existing (empty) directory fails, Git no longer removes said directory.
Interrupting processes (and their children) using Control+C is now a lot more robust.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.15.1 (November 29th 2017)

Bug Fixes

The bug introduced into Git for Windows v2.15.1 where vim would show an ugly warning upon startup was fixed.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.15.0 (October 30th 2017)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.15.1.
Operations in massively-sparse worktrees are now much faster if core.fscache = true.
It is now possible to configure nano or Notepad++ as Git's default editor instead of vim.
Comes with OpenSSL v1.0.2m.
Git for Windows' updater now uses non-intrusive toast notifications on Windows 8, 8.1 and 10.
Running git fetch in a repository with lots of refs is now considerably faster.
Comes with cURL v7.57.0.

Bug Fixes

The experimental --show-ignored-directory option of git status which was removed in Git for Windows v2.15.0 without warning has been reintroduced as a deprecated option.
The git update command (to auto-update Git for Windows) will now also work behind proxies.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.14.3 (October 23rd 2017)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.15.0.

Bug Fixes

The auto-updater tried to run at a precise time, and did not run when the computer was switched off at that time. Now it runs as soon after the scheduled time as possible.
The auto-updater no longer suggests to downgrade from Release Candidates.
When the auto-updater asked the user whether they want to upgrade to a certain version, and the user declined, the auto-updater will not bother the user about said version again.
The installer, when run with /SKIPIFINUSE=1, now detects whether any executable in Git for Windows' installation is run
Git for Windows no longer includes (non-working) xmlcatalog.exe and xmllint.exe.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.14.2(3) (October 12th 2017)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.14.3.
Git for Windows now ships with a diff helper for OpenOffice documents.
Comes with Git LFS v2.3.4.
Comes with cURL v7.56.1.

Bug Fixes

Git for Windows now handles worktrees at the top-level of a UNC share correctly.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.14.2(2) (October 5th 2017)

New Features

Comes with Git LFS v2.3.3.

Bug Fixes

Re-enabled some SSHv1 ciphers since some sites (e.g. Visual Studio Team Services) rely on them for the time being.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.14.2 (September 26th 2017)

New Features

Comes with BusyBox v1.28.0pre.16467.b4c390e17.
Comes with Git LFS v2.3.2.
Comes with cURL v7.56.0.
Comes with OpenSSH v7.6p1.
Comes with patch level 4 of the MSYS2 runtime (Git for Windows flavor) based on Cygwin 2.9.0.

Bug Fixes

A bug which caused the console window to be closed when executing certain Bash scripts was fixed.
A crash when calling kill <pid> for a non-existing process was fixed.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.14.1 (August 10th 2017)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.14.2.
Comes with cURL v7.55.1.
The XP-compatibility layer emulating pthreads (which is no longer needed) was dropped in favor of modern Windows threading APIs; This should make threaded operations slightly faster and more robust.
On Windows, UNC paths can now be accessed via file://host/share/repo.git-style paths.
Comes with a new custom Git command git update to help keeping Git up-to-date on your machine.
The Git installer now offers an option to keep Git up-to-date by calling git update regularly.
Comes with BusyBox v1.28.0pre.16353.2739df917.
As is common elsewhere, Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right now move word-wise in Git Bash, too.
Comes with patch level 2 of the MSYS2 runtime (Git for Windows flavor) based on Cygwin 2.9.0.
Comes with Git LFS v2.3.0.
The vs/master branch can now be built in Visual Studio 2017, too
As requested by the same user who implemented the change, Git for Windows now comes with tig, a text-mode interface for Git.

Bug Fixes

It is now possible to override http.sslBackend on the command-line.
The installer now detects correctly whether symbolic links can be created by regular users.
Git Bash now renders non-ASCII directories nicely.
A regression that caused the fetch operation with lots of refs to be a lot slower than before was fixed.
The git-gui.exe and gitk.exe wrappers intended to be used in Git CMD now handle command-line parameters correctly.
The core.longPaths setting is now heeded when packing refs, and other previously forgotten Git commands.
Pressing Ctrl+Z in Git Bash no longer kills Win32 processes (e.g. git.exe) anymore, because POSIX job control is only available with MSYS2 processes.
Git for Windows now sets core.fsyncObjectFiles = true by default which makes it a lot more fault-tolerant, say, when power is lost.
A bug has been fixed where Git for Windows could run into an infinite loop trying to rename a file.
Before installing Git for Windows, we already verified that no Git Bash instance is active (which would prevent files from being overwritten). We now also verify that no git.exe processes are active, either.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.14.0(2) (August 7th 2017)

Note: there have been MinGit-only releases v2.12.2(3) and v2.13.1(3) with backports of the important bug fix in v2.14.1 as well as the experimental --show-ignored-directory option of git status.

New Features

Comes with Git v2.14.1.
Comes with cURL v7.55.0.
The Git Bash Here context menu item is now also available in the special Libraries folders.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.14.0 (August 6th 2017)

Bug Fixes

A regression introduced in v2.14.0 that prevented fetching via SSH was fixed.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.13.3 (July 13th 2017)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.14.0.
Comes with BusyBox v1.28.0pre.15857.9480dca7c.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.12.0.
It is now possible to switch between Secure Channel and OpenSSL for Git's HTTPS transport by setting the http.sslBackend config variable to "openssl" or "schannel"; This is now also the method used by the installer (rather than copying libcurl-4.dll files around).
The experimental option --show-ignored-directory was added to git status to show only the name of ignored directories when the option --untracked=all is used.
Git for Windows releases now also include an experimental BusyBox-based MinGit.

Bug Fixes

Repository-local aliases are now resolved again in worktrees.
CamelCased aliases were broken in v2.13.3; This has been fixed again.
The 32-bit Git binaries are now built against the same dependencies that are shipped with Git for Windows.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.13.2 (June 26th 2017)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.13.3.
Comes with Git LFS v2.2.1.
Comes with MSYS2 runtime (Git for Windows flavor) based on Cygwin 2.8.2.

Bug Fixes

Git Bash no longer tries to use the getent tool which was never shipped with Git for Windows.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.13.1(2) (June 15th 2017)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.13.2.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.10.1.
The Git Bash prompt can now be overridden by creating the file .config\git\git-prompt.sh.
Comes with cURL v7.54.1.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.13.1 (June 13th 2017)

Bug Fixes

git commit and git status no longer randomly throw segmentation faults.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.13.0 (May 10th 2017)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.13.1.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.10.0.
Comes with OpenSSH 7.5p1.
Comes with Git Flow v1.11.0.
Comes with Git LFS v2.1.1.
Git now uses the flag introduced with Windows 10 Creators Update to create symbolic links without requiring elevated privileges in Developer Mode.

Bug Fixes

The documentation of Git for Windows' several config files was improved.
When interrupting Git processes in Git Bash by pressing Ctrl+C, Git now removes .lock files as designed (accompanying Git PR; this should also fix issue #338).
git status -uno now treats submodules in ignored directories correctly.
The fscache feature no longer slows down git commit -m <message> in large worktrees.
Executing git.exe in Git Bash when the current working directory is a UNC path now works as expected.
Staging/unstaging multiple files in Git GUI via Ctrl+C now works.
When hitting Ctrl+T in Git GUI to stage files, but the file list is empty, Git GUI no longer shows an exception window.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.12.2(2) (April 5th 2017)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.13.0.
Comes with cURL v7.54.0.
Comes with Git LFS v2.1.0.

Bug Fixes

As per Git LFS' convention, it is installed into the bin/ directory again.
Calling git add with an absolute path using different upper/lower case than recorded on disk will now work as expected instead of claiming that the paths are outside the repository.
Git for Windows no longer tries to determine the default printer.
When writing the Git index file, Git for Windows no longer has the wrong idea about the file's timestamp.
On Windows, absolute paths can start with a backslash (implicitly referring to the same drive as the current directory), and now git clone can use those paths, too.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.12.2 (March 27th 2017)

New Features

Portable Git is now using a custom-built SFX that is based directly on 7-Zip's SFX.
Git LFS was upgraded to v2.0.2.
Updated the MSYS2 runtime to Cygwin 2.8.0.
Git LFS can now be disabled in the first installer page (users can still enable it manually, as before, of course).
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.9.1.

Bug Fixes

A potential crash in git status with lots of files was fixed.
Git LFS now gets installed into the correct location.
Git LFS is now configured correctly out of the box (unless disabled).
The http.sslCAInfo config setting is now private to the Git for Windows installation that owns the file.
git difftool -d no longer crashes randomly.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.12.1 (March 21st 2017)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.12.2.
An earlier iteration of the changes speeding up the case-insensitive cache of file names was replaced by a new iteration.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.12.0 (February 25th 2017)

A MinGit-only v2.12.0(2) was released in the meantime.

New Features

Comes with Git v2.12.1.
In addition to the GitForWindows NuGet package, we now also publish MinGit as a NuGet package.
Git for Windows now bundles Git LFS.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.9.0.
Git can now be configured to use Secure Channel to use the Windows Credential Store when fetching/pushing via HTTPS.
Updates Git-Flow to v1.10.2 (addressing #1092).
Git for Windows' fork of the MSYS2 runtime was rebased to a preview of the Cygwin runtime version 2.8.0 (due soon) to fix fork: child <n> - forked process <pid> died unexpectedly, retry 0, exit code 0xC0000142, errno 11 problems.

Bug Fixes

MinGit no longer gets distracted by incompatible libeay32.dll versions in C:\Windows\system32.
Long paths between 248 and 260 characters were not handled correctly since Git for Windows v2.11.1, which is now fixed.
The awk.exe shipped with MinGit now ships with a previously missing a dependency (this fixes git mergetool).
Git for Windows does not ship with localized messages to save on bandwidth, and the gettext initialization can be skipped when the directory with said messages is missing, saving us up to 150ms on every git.exe startup.
A possible crash when running git log --pickaxe-regex -S<regex> was fixed.
The ORIGINAL_PATH variable, recently introduced by the MSYS2 project to allow for special "PATH modes", is now handled in the same manner as the PATH variable when jumping the Windows<->MSYS2 boundary, fixing issues when ORIGINAL_PATH is converted to Windows format and back again.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.11.1 (February 3rd 2017)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.12.0.
The builtin difftool is no longer opt-in, as it graduated to be officially adopted by the Git project.
Comes with v2.7.0 of the POSIX emulation layer based on the Cygwin runtime.
Includes cURL 7.53.1.
The Portable Git now defaults to using the included Git Credential Manager.

Bug Fixes

The stderr output is unbuffered again, i.e. errors are displayed immediately (this was reported on the Git mailing list as well as issues #1064, #1064, #1068).
Git can clone again from paths containing non-ASCII characters.
We no longer ship two different versions of curl.exe.
Hitting Ctrl+T in Git GUI even after all files have been (un)staged no longer throws an exception.
A couple of Git GUI bugs regarding the list of recent repositories have been fixed.
The git-bash.exe helper now waits again for the terminal to be closed before returning.
Git for Windows no longer attempts to send empty credentials to HTTP(S) servers that handle only Basic and/or Digest authentication.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.11.0(3) (January 14th 2017)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.11.1.
Performance was enhanced when using fscache in a massively sparse checkout.
Git hooks can now be .exe files.

Bug Fixes

Git GUI will no longer set GIT_DIR when calling Git Bash after visualizing the commit history.
When the PATH contains UNC entries, Git Bash will no longer error out with a "Bad address" error message.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.11.0(2) (January 13th 2017)

Bug Fixes

Fixed an off-by-two bug in the POSIX emulation layer that possibly affected third-party Perl scripts that load native libraries dynamically.
A regression in rebase -i, introduced into v2.11.0(2), which caused commit attribution to be mishandled after resolving conflicts, was fixed.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.11.0 (December 1st 2016)

New Features

Reading a large index has been speeded up using pthreads.
The checkout operation was speeded up for the common cases.
The status operation was made faster in large worktrees with many changes.
The diff operation saw performance improvements when working on a huge number of renamed files.
PuTTY's plink.exe can now be used in GIT_SSH_COMMAND without jumping through hoops, too.
The MSYS2 runtime was synchronized with Cygwin 2.6.1.

Bug Fixes

Non-ASCII characters are now shown properly again in Git Bash.
Implicit NTLM authentication works again when accessing a remote repository via HTTP/HTTPS without having to specify empty user name and password.
Our poll() emulation now uses 64-bit tick counts to avoid the (very rare) wraparound issue where it could miscalculate time differences every 49 days.
The --no-lock-index option of git status is now also respected also in submodules.
The regression of v2.11.0 where Git could no longer push to shared folders via UNC paths is fixed.
A bug in the MSYS2 runtime where it performed POSIX->Windows argument conversion incorrectly was fixed.
The MSYS2 runtime was prepared to access the FAST_CWD internal data structure in upcoming Windows versions.
Fixed a bug in the experimental builtin difftool where it would not handle copied/renamed files properly.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.10.2 (November 2nd 2016)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.11.0.
Performance of git add in large worktrees was improved.
A new, experimental, builtin version of the difftool is available as an opt-in feature.
Support has been added to generate project files for Visual Studio 2010 and later.

Bug Fixes

The preload-index feature now behaves much better in conjunction with sparse checkouts.
When encountering a symbolic link, Git now always tries to read it, not only when core.symlinks = true.
The regression where Git would not interpret non-ASCII characters passed from a CMD window correctly has been fixed.
Performance of the cache of case-insensitive file names has been improved.
When building with MS Visual C, release builds are now properly optimized.
git cvsexportcommit now also works with CVSNT.
Git's Perl no longer gets confused by externally-set PERL5LIB.
The uninstaller no longer leaves an empty Git\mingw64 folder behind.
The installer now actually records whether the user chose to enable or disable the Git Credential Manager.
A certain scenario that could cause a crash in cherry-pick no longer causes that.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.10.1(2) (October 13th 2016)

Git for windows v2.10.1(2) was a MinGit-only release (i.e. there was no Git for windows installer for that version).

New Features

Comes with Git v2.10.2.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.8.1.
Comes with cURL v7.51.0.
Git for Windows can now be built easily with Visual C++ 2015.
The installer now logs post-install errors more verbosely.
A new option asks the installer to skip installation if Git's files are in use.
A new option asks the installer to quietly skip downgrading Git for Windows, without indicating failure.
There is now an explicit option for symbolic link support, including a link to a more verbose explanation of the issue.

Bug Fixes

when upgrading Git for Windows, SSH agent processes are now auto-terminated.
When trying to install/upgrade on a Windows version that is no longer supported, we now refuse to do so.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.10.1 (October 4th 2016)

New Features

The speed of the SHA-1 calculation was improved by using OpenSSL's routines which leverages features of current Intel hardware.
The git reset command learned the (still experimental) --stdin option.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.10.0 (September 3rd 2016)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.10.1.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.7.0.
Comes with Git Flow v1.10.0.
We now produce nice diffs for .docm and .dotm files, just as we did for .docx files already.

Bug Fixes

The icon in the Explorer integration ("Git Bash Here"), which was lost by mistake in v2.10.0, is back.
Fixed a crash when calling git diff -G<regex> on new-born files without configured user diff drivers.
Interactive GPG signing of commits and tags was fixed.
Calling Git with --date=format:<invalid-format> no longer results in an out-of-memory but reports the problem and aborts instead.
Git Bash now opens properly even for Azure AD accounts.
Git GUI respects the commit.gpgsign setting again.
Upgrades the bundled OpenSSL to v1.0.2j.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.9.3(2) (August 25th 2016)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.10.0.
The git rebase -i command was made faster by reimplementing large parts in C.
After helping the end-users to use the new defaults for PATH and FSCache, the installer now respects the saved settings again.
git version --build-options now also reports the architecture.

Bug Fixes

When upgrading Git for Windows, the installer no longer opens a second window while uninstalling the previous version.
Git for Windows' SDK can build an installer out of the box again, without requiring an extra package to be installed.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.9.3 (August 13th 2016)

New Features

Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.6.1.
The feature introduced with Git for Windows v2.9.3 where cat-file can apply smudge filters was renamed to --filters and made compatible with the --batch mode (the former option name --smudge has been deprecated and will go away in v2.10.0).
Comes with OpenSSH 7.3p1.
Git's .exe files are now code-signed, helping with performance when being run with Windows File Protection.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.9.2 (July 16th 2016)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.9.3.
Updated Git Credential Manager to version 1.6.0.
Includes support for git status --porcelain=v2.
Avoids evaluating unnecessary patch IDs when determining which commits do not need to be rebased because they are already upstream.
Sports a new --smudge option for git cat-file that lets it pass blob contents through smudge filters configured for the specified path.

Bug Fixes

When offering to Launch Git Bash after the installation, it now launches in the home directory, consistent with the Git Bash Start Menu entry.
When ~/.gitconfig sets core.hideDotFiles=false, git init respects that again.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.9.0 (June 14th 2016)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.9.2 (skipping the Windows release of Git 2.9.1 due to a regression caught by the automated tests).
Git Credential Manager was updated to v1.5.0.
The installer will now refuse to downgrade Git for Windows, unless the user assures that it is intended.
MinGit, the portable, non-interactive Git intended for third-party tools, is now also built as part of Git for Windows' official versions.

Bug Fixes

When git bundle create is asked to create an empty bundle, it is supposed to error out and delete the corrupt bundle file. The deletion no longer fails due to an unreleased lock file.
When launching git help <command>, the help.browser config setting is now respected.
The title bar in Git for Windows' SDK shows the correct prefix again.
We no longer throw an assertion when using the git credential-store.
When configuring notepad as commit message editor, UTF-8 messages are now handled correctly.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.8.4 (June 7th 2016)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.9.0.

Bug Fixes

When running git gc --aggressive or git repack -ald in the presence of multiple pack files, the command still had open handles to the pack files it wanted to remove. This has been fixed.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.8.3 (May 20th 2016)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.8.4.

Bug Fixes

Child processes no longer inherit handles to temporary files, which previously could prevent index.lock from being deleted.
When configuring Git Bash with Windows' default console, it no longer loses its icon.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.8.2 (May 3rd 2016)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.8.3.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.8.1 (April 4th 2016)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.8.2.
Starting with version 2.8.2, Git for Windows is also published as a NuGet package.
Comes with Git Credential Manager v1.3.0.

Bug Fixes

FSCache is now enabled by default even when upgrading from previous Git for Windows versions.
We now add git.exe to the PATH by default even when upgrading from previous Git for Windows versions.
Git GUI now sets author information correctly when amending.
OpenSSL received a critical update to version 1.0.2h.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.8.0 (March 29th 2016)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.8.1.
The Git for Windows project updated its contributor guidelines to the Contributor Covenant 1.4.

Bug Fixes

Git's default editor (vim) is no longer freezing in CMD windows.
GIT_SSH (and other executable paths that Git wants to spawn) can now contain spaces.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.7.4 (March 18th 2016)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.8.0.
Comes with the Git Credential Manager v1.2.2.
The FSCache feature (which was labeled experimental for quite some time) is now enabled by default.
Git is now added to the PATH by default (previously, the default was for Git to be available only from Git Bash/CMD).
The installer now offers to launch the Git Bash right away.

Bug Fixes

The previous workaround for the blurred link to the Git Credential Manager was fixed so that the link is neither blurry nor overlapping.
The installer now changes the label of the Next button to Install on the last wizard page before installing.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.7.3 (March 15th 2016)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.7.4.

Bug Fixes

The Git Credential Manager hyperlink in the installer is no longer blurred.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.7.2 (February 23rd 2016)

New Features

Git for Windows now ships with the Git Credential Manager for Windows.
Comes with Git v2.7.3.

Bug Fixes

We now handle UTF-8 merge and squash messages correctly in Git GUI.
When trying to modify a repository config outside of any Git worktree, git config no longer creates a .git/ directory but prints an appropriate error message instead.
A new version of Git for Windows' SDK [was released](https://github.com/git-for-windows/build-extra/releases/git-sdk-1.0.3] that works around pacman-key issues.
We no longer show asterisks when reading the username for credentials.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.7.1(2) (February 12th 2016)

New Features

Git for Windows' SDK version 1.0.2 has been released.
The "list references" window of gitk is now wider by default.
Comes with Git 2.7.2.

Bug Fixes

The user is now presented with a nice error message when calling node while node.exe is not in the PATH (this bug also affected other interactive console programs such as python and php).
The arrow keys are respected again in gitk.
When a too-long path is encountered, git clean -dfx no longer aborts quietly.
Git GUI learned to stage lines appended to a single-line file.
When launching C:\Program Files\Git\bin\bash -l -i in a cmd window and pressing Ctrl+C, the console is no longer corrupted (previously, the bash.exe redirector would terminate and both cmd & Bash would compete for user input).

Changes since Git for Windows v2.7.1 (February 6th 2016)

New Features

The context menu items in the explorer now show icons.

Bug Fixes

A bug was fixed where worktrees would forget their location e.g. after an interactive rebase.
Thanks to Eric Lawrence and Martijn Laan, our installer sports a better way to look for system files now.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.7.0(2) (February 2nd 2016)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.7.1.

Bug Fixes

Git GUI now starts properly even when the working directory contains non-ASCII characters.
We forgot to enable Address Space Layout Randomization and Data Execution Prevention on our Git wrapper, and this is now fixed.
A bug in one of the DLLs used by Git for Windows was fixed that prevented Git from working properly in 64-bit setups where the FLG_LDR_TOP_DOWN global flag is set.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.7.0 (January 5th 2016)

New Features

To stave off exploits, Git for Windows now uses Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) and Data Execution Prevention (DEP).
Git for Windows' support for git pull --rebase=interactive that was dropped when the pull command was rewritten in C, was resurrected.
The installers are now dual signed with SHA-2 and SHA-1 certificates.
The uninstaller is signed now, too.

Bug Fixes

When installing as administrator, we no longer offer the option to install quiicklaunch icons because quicklaunch icons can only be installed per-user.
If a ~/.bashrc is detected without a ~/.bash_profile, the generated file will now also source ~/.profile if that exists.
The environment variable HOME can now be used to set the home directory even when running with accounts that are part of a different domain than the current (non-domain-joined) machine (in which case the MSYS2 runtime has no way to emulate POSIX-style UIDs).
Git can now fetch and push via HTTPS even when the http.sslCAInfo config variable was unset.
Git for Windows is now handling the case gracefully where the current user has no permission to list the parent of the current directory.
More file locking issues ("Unlink of file ... failed. Should I try again?") were fixed.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.6.4 (December 14th 2015)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.7.0.

Bug Fixes

Non-ASCII command-lines are now passed properly to shell scripts.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.6.3 (November 10th 2015)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.6.4.
Also available as .tar.bz2 packages (you need an MSYS2/Cygwin-compatible unpacker to recreate the symbolic links correctly).

Bug Fixes

Git for Windows v2.6.3's installer failed to elevate privileges automatically (reported three times, making it a charm), and as a consequence Git for Windows 2.6.3 was frequently installed per-user by mistake
The bug where SHELL_PATH had spaces and that was reported multiple times has been fixed.
An additional work-around from upstream Git for SHELL_PATH containing spaces (fixing problems with interactive rebase's exec command has been applied.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.6.2 (October 19th 2015)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.6.3.
Enables the stack smasher to protect against buffer overflows.

Bug Fixes

Git Bash works now even when choosing Windows' default console and installing into a short path (e.g. C:\Git).
Notepad can now really be used to edit commit messages.
Git's garbage collector now handles stale refs/remotes/origin/HEAD gracefully.
The regression in Git for Windows 2.6.2 that it required administrator privileges to be installed is now fixed.
When notepad is configured as default editor, we no longer do anything specially unless editing files inside .git/.

Changes since Git for Windows v2.6.1 (October 5th 2015)

New Features

Comes with Git v2.6.2
Users who are part of a Windows domain now have sensible default values for user.name and user.email.

Bug Fixes

We no longer run out of page file space when git fetching large repositories.
The description of Windows' default console is accurate now (the console became more powerful in Windows 10).
Git GUI now respects the terminal emulation chosen at install time when running the Git Bash.

Changes since Git-2.6.0 (September 29th 2015)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.6.1
The installer now writes the file /etc/install-options.txt to record which options were chosen at install time.
Replaces git flow with the AVH edition which is maintained actively, in surprising and disappointing contrast to Vincent Driessen's very own project.

Bug Fixes

The PATH variable is now really left alone when choosing the "Use Git from Git Bash only" option in the installer. Note that upgrading Git for Windows will call the previous version's uninstaller, which might still have that bug.
Git GUI's Registry>Create Desktop Icon now generates correct shortcuts.
The antiword utility to render Word documents for use in git diff now works correctly.
In 64-bit installations, we no longer set a pack size limit by default.
When installing Git for Windows as regular user, the installer no longer tries to create privileged registry keys.

Changes since Git-2.5.3 (September 18th 2015)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.6.0
The WhoUses.exe tool to determine which process holds a lock on a given file (which was shipped with Git for Windows 1.x) gets installed alongside Git for Windows again.
The values CurrentVersion, InstallPath and LibexecPath are added to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\GitForWindows registry key to help third-party add-ons to find us.
When fetching or pushing with Git without a console, we now fall back to Git GUI's askpass helper to ask for pass phrases.
When run through <INSTALL_PATH>\cmd\git.exe, Git will find tools in $HOME/bin now.

Bug Fixes

The portable version avoids DLL search path problems even when installed into a FAT filesystem.
Configuring notepad as editor without configuring a width for commit messages no longer triggers an error message.
When using Windows' default console for Git Bash, the .sh file associations work again.
Portable Git's README is now clearer about the need to run post-install.bat when unpacking manually.
We use the winpty trick now to run ipython interactively, too.
When the environment variable HOME is not set, we now fall back correctly to use HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH.
The home directory is now set correctly when running as the SYSTEM user.
The environment variable GIT_WORK_TREE may now differ in lower/upper case with the Git's idea of the current working directory.
Running git clone --dissociate ... no longer locks the pack files during the repacking phase.
Upstream cURL fixes for NTLM proxy issues ("Unknown SSL error") were backported.
The 64-bit version now includes the astextplain script it lacked by mistake.

Changes since Git-2.5.2(2) (September 13th 2015)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.5.3.
Includes git flow.
By configuring git config core.editor notepad, users can now use notepad.exe as their default editor. Configuring git config format.commitMessageColumns 72 will be picked up by the notepad wrapper and line-wrap the commit message after the user edited it.
The Subversion bindings for use with git svn were upgraded to version 1.9.1.
Some interactive console programs, e.g. psql.exe, now work in mintty thanks to pre-configured aliases.
The mechanism to diff .pdf, .doc and .docx files known from Git for Windows 1.x has been ported to Git for Windows 2.x.
Git can now access IPv6-only hosts via HTTP/HTTPS.

Bug Fixes

The .vimrc in the home directory is now allowed to have DOS line endings.
The README.portable file of the portable Git mentions the need to run post-install.bat when the archive was extracted manually.
Home directories for user names with non-ASCII characters are handled correctly now.
The documentation no longer shows plain-text linkgit:... "links" but proper hyperlinks instead.
The mtab link is written to /etc/mtab again, as it should.
When run inside the PowerShell, Git no longer gets confused when the current directory's path and what is recorded in the file system differs in case (e.g. "GIT/" vs "Git/").

Changes since Git-2.5.2 (September 10th 2015)

Bug Fixes

The Git GUI can be launched from the Start menu again.
It now works to call git add -p -- . when there is a large number of files.
The Arrow keys can be used in the Bash history again when run in the Windows console.
Tab completion in the context of a large Active Directory is no longer slow.

Changes since Git-2.5.1 (August 31th 2015)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.5.2
Alternates can now point to UNC paths, i.e. network drives.

Bug Fixes

The MSYS2 runtime was taught not to look hard for groups, speeding up Git Bash's startup time.
A work around was added for issues when installing 32-bit Git for Windows on 64-bit Windows 10.
The installer no longer freezes when there are interactive commands in the user's .profile.
git rebase --skip was speeded up again.
The redirector in /bin/bash.exe now adjusts the PATH environment variable correctly (i.e. so that Git's executables are found) before launching the real Bash, even when called without --login.
When installing Git for Windows to a location whose path is longer than usual, Git commands no longer trigger occasional Bad address errors.
Git no longer asks for a DVD to be inserted again when one has been ejected from the D: drive.

Changes since Git-2.5.0 (August 18th 2015)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.5.1

Bug Fixes

Backspace works now with ConHost-based (cmd.exe) terminal.
When there is a ~/.bashrc but no ~/.bash_profile, the latter will be created automatically.
When calling a non-login shell, the prompt now works.
The text in the installer describing the terminal emulator options is no longer cut off.
The connect.exe tool to allow SSH connections via HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS proxies is included in Git for Windows again, as it was in Git for Windows 1.x.
The LANG variable is no longer left unset (which caused troubles with vim).
call start-ssh-agent no longer spits out bogus lines.
It is now possible even behind NTLM-authenticated proxies to install Git for Windows' SDK.
We can handle the situation now when the first $PATH elements point outside of Git for Windows' bin/ directories and contain .dll files that interfere with our own (e.g. PostgreSQL's libintl-8.dll).
The patch tool is now included again as it was in Git for Windows 1.x.

Changes since Git-2.4.6 (July 18th 2015)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.5.0
On Windows 7 and later, the Git Bash can now correctly be pinned to the task bar.

Bug Fixes

The size of the installers was reduced again, almost to the levels of Git for Windows 1.x.
Under certain circumstances, when the Windows machine is part of a Windows domain with lots of users, the startup of the Git Bash is now faster.
Git no longer warns about being unable to read bogus Git attributes.

Changes since Git-2.4.5 (June 29th 2015)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.4.6

Bug Fixes

Git for Windows handles symlinks now, even if core.symlinks does not tell Git to generate symlinks itself.
git svn learned not to reuse incompatible on-disk caches left over from previous Git for Windows versions.

Changes since Git-2.4.4 (June 20th 2015)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.4.5

Bug Fixes

Git Bash no longer crashes when called with TERM=msys. This reinstates compatibility with GitHub for Windows.

Changes since Git-2.4.3 (June 12th 2015)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.4.4
The POSIX-to-Windows path mangling can now be turned off by setting the MSYS_NO_PATHCONV environment variable. This even works for individual command lines: MSYS_NO_PATHCONV=1 cmd /c dir /x will list the files in the current directory along with their 8.3 versions.

Bug Fixes

git-bash.exe no longer changes the working directory to the user's home directory.
Git can now clone into a drive root, e.g. C:\.
For backwards-compatibility, redirectors are installed into /bin/bash.exe and /bin/git.exe, e.g. to support SourceTree and TortoiseGit better.
When using core.symlinks = true while cloning repositories with symbolic links pointing to directories, git status no longer shows bogus modifications.

Changes since Git-2.4.2 (May 27th 2015)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.4.3

Bug Fixes

We include diff.exe just as it was the case in Git for Windows 1.x
The certificates for accessing remote repositories via HTTPS are found on XP again.
clear.exe and the cursor keys in vi work again when Git Bash is run in Windows' default console window ("ConHost").
The ACLs of the user's temporary directory are no longer modified when mounting /tmp/ (git-for-windows/git#190).
Git Bash Here works even from the context menu of the empty area in Windows Explorer's view of C:, D:, etc (git-for-windows/git#176).

Changes since Git-2.4.1 (May 14th 2015)

New Features

On Windows Vista and later, NTFS junctions can be used to emulate symlinks now; To enable this emulation, the MSYS environment variable needs to be set to winsymlinks:nativestrict.
The Git Bash learned to support several options to support running the Bash in arbitrary terminal emulators.

Bug Fixes

Just like Git for Windows 1.x, pressing Shift+Tab in the Git Bash triggers tab completion.
Auto-mount the temporary directory of the current user to /tmp/ again, just like Git for Windows 1.x did (thanks to MSys1's hard-coded mount point).

Changes since Git-2.4.0(2) (May 7th 2015)

New Features

Comes with Git 2.4.1

Bug Fixes

When selecting the standard Windows console window for Git Bash, a regression was fixed that triggered an extra console window to be opened.
The password can be entered interactively again when git pushing to a HTTPS remote.

Changes since Git-2.4.0 (May 5th 2015)

Bug Fixes

The .sh file association was fixed
The installer will now remove files from a previous Git for Windows versions, particularly important for 32-bit -> 64-bit upgrades

New Features

The installer now offers the choice between opening the Git Bash in a MinTTY (default) or a regular Windows console window (Git for Windows 1.x' setting).

Changes since Git-2.3.7-preview20150429

New Features

Comes with Git 2.4.0
Git for Windows now installs its configuration into a Windows-wide location: %PROGRAMDATA%\Git\config (which will be shared by libgit2-based applications with the next libgit2 version)

Bug Fixes

Fixed a regression where Git Bash would not start properly on Windows XP
Tab completion works like on Linux and MacOSX (double-Tab required to show ambiguous completions)
In 32-bit setups, all the MSYS2 .dll's address ranges are adjusted ("auto-rebased") as part of the installation process
The post-install scripts of MSYS2 are now executed as part of the installation process, too
All files that are part of the installation will now be registered so they are deleted upon uninstall

Changes since Git-2.3.6-preview20150425

New Features

Comes with Git 2.3.7

Bug Fix

A flawed "fix" that ignores submodules during rebases was dropped
The home directory can be overridden using the $HOME environment variable again

Changes since Git-2.3.5-preview20150402

New Features

Comes with Git 2.3.6

Bug Fixes

Fixed encoding issues in Git Bash and keept the TMP environment variable intact.
Downgraded the nettle packages due to an MSYS2 issue
A couple of fixes to the Windows-specific Git wrapper
Git wrapper now refuses to use $HOMEDRIVE$HOMEPATH if it points to a non-existing directory (this can happen if it points to a network drive that just so happens to be Disconnected Right Now).
Much smoother interaction with the mintty terminal emulator
Respects the newly introduced Windows-wide %PROGRAMDATA%\Git\config configuration

Changes since Git-1.9.5-preview20150402

New Features

Comes with Git 2.3.5 plus Windows-specific patches.
First release based on MSYS2.
Support for 64-bit!

Backwards-incompatible changes

The development environment changed completely from the previous version (maybe introducing some regressions).
No longer ships with Git Cheetah (because there are better-maintained Explorer extensions out there).

Changes since Git-1.9.5-preview20141217

New Features

Comes with Git 1.9.5 plus Windows-specific patches.
Make vimdiff usable with git mergetool.

Security Updates

Mingw-openssl to 0.9.8zf and msys-openssl to 1.0.1m
Bash to 3.1.23(6)
Curl to 7.41.0

Bugfixes

ssh-agent: only ask for password if not already loaded
Reenable perl debugging ("perl -de 1" possible again)
Set icon background color for Windows 8 tiles
poll: honor the timeout on Win32
For git.exe alone, use the same HOME directory fallback mechanism as /etc/profile

Changes since Git-1.9.4-preview20140929

New Features

Comes with Git 1.9.5 plus Windows-specific patches.

Bugfixes

Safeguards against bogus file names on NTFS (CVE-2014-9390).

Changes since Git-1.9.4-preview20140815

New Features

Comes with Git 1.9.4 plus Windows-specific patches.

Bugfixes

Update bash to patchlevel 3.1.20(4) (msysgit PR#254, msysgit issue #253).
Fixes CVE-2014-6271, CVE-2014-7169, CVE-2014-7186 and CVE-2014-7187.
gitk.cmd now works when paths contain the ampersand (&) symbol (msysgit PR #252)
Default to automatically close and restart applications in silent mode installation type
git svn is now usable again (regression in previous update, msysgit PR#245)

Changes since Git-1.9.4-preview20140611

New Features

Comes with Git 1.9.4 plus Windows-specific patches
Add vimtutor (msysgit PR #220)
Update OpenSSH to 6.6.1p1 and its OpenSSL to 1.0.1i (msysgit PR #221, #223, #224, #226, #229, #234, #236)
Update mingw OpenSSL to 0.9.8zb (msysgit PR #241, #242)

Bugfixes

Checkout problem with directories exceeding MAX_PATH (PR #212, msysgit #227)
Backport a webdav fix from junio/maint (d9037e http-push.c: make CURLOPT_IOCTLDATA a usable pointer, PR #230)

Regressions

git svn is/might be broken. Fixes welcome.

Changes since Git-1.9.2-preview20140411

New Features

Comes with Git 1.9.4 plus Windows-specific patches.

Bugfixes

Upgrade openssl to 0.9.8za (msysgit PR #212)
Config option to disable side-band-64k for transport (#101)
Make git-http-backend, git-http-push, git-http-fetch available again (#174)

Changes since Git-1.9.0-preview20140217

New Features

Comes with Git 1.9.2 plus Windows-specific patches.
Custom installer settings can be saved and loaded, for unsupervised installation on batches of machines (msysGit PR #168).
Comes with VIM 7.4 (msysGit PR #170).
Comes with ZLib 1.2.8.
Comes with xargs 4.4.2.

Bugfixes

Work around stack limitations when listing an insane number of tags (PR #154).
Assorted test fixes (PRs #156, #158).
Compile warning fix in config.c (PR #159).
Ships with actual dos2unix and unix2dos.
The installer no longer recommends mixing with Cygwin.
Fixes a regression in Git-Cheetah which froze the Explorer upon calling Git Bash from the context menu (Git-Cheetah PRs #14 and #15).

Changes since Git-1.8.5.2-preview20131230

New Features

Comes with Git 1.9.0 plus Windows-specific patches.
Better work-arounds for Windows-specific path length limitations (pull request #122)
Uses optimized TortoiseGitPLink when detected (msysGit pull request #154)
Allow Windows users to use Linux Git on their files, using Vagrant (msysGit pull request #159)
InnoSetup 5.5.4 is now used to generate the installer (msysGit pull request #167)

Bugfixes

Fixed regression with interactive password prompt for remotes using the HTTPS protocol (issue #111)
We now work around Subversion servers printing non-ISO-8601-compliant time stamps (pull request #126)
The installer no longer sets the HOME environment variable (msysGit pull request #166)
Perl no longer creates empty sys$command files when no stdin is connected (msysGit pull request #152)

Changes since Git-1.8.4-preview20130916

New Features

Comes with Git 1.8.5.2 plus Windows-specific patches.
Windows-specific patches are now grouped into pseudo-branches which should make future development robust despite slow uptake of the Windows-specific patches by upstream git.git.
Works around more path length limitations (pull request #86)
Has an optional stat() cache toggled via core.fscache (pull request #107)

Bugfixes

Lots of installer fixes
git-cmd: Handle home directory on a different drive correctly (pull request #146)
git-cmd: add a helper to work with the ssh agent (pull request #135)
Git-Cheetah: prevent duplicate menu entries (pull request #7)
No longer replaces dos2unix with hd2u (a more powerful, but slightly incompatible version of dos2unix)

Changes since Git-1.8.3-preview20130601

New Features

Comes with Git 1.8.4 plus Windows specific patches.
Enabled unicode support in bash (#42 and #79)
Included iconv.exe to assist in writing encoding filters
Updated openssl to 0.9.8y

Bugfixes

Avoid emitting non-printing chars to set console title.
Various encoding fixes for the git test suite
Ensure wincred handles empty username/password.

Changes since Git-1.8.1.2-preview20130201

New Features

Comes with Git 1.8.3 plus Windows specific patches.
Updated curl to 7.30.0 with IPv6 support enabled.
Updated gnupg to 1.4.13
Installer improvements for update or reinstall options.

Bugfixes

Avoid emitting color coded ls output to pipes.
ccache binary updated to work on XP.
Fixed association of .sh files setup by the installer.
Fixed registry-based explorer menu items for XP (#95)

Changes since Git-1.8.0-preview20121022

New Features

Comes with Git 1.8.1.2 plus Windows specific patches.
Includes support for using the Windows Credential API to store access credentials securely and provide access via the control panel tool to manage git credentials.
Rebase autosquash support is now enabled by default. See http://goo.gl/2kwKJ for some suggestions on using this.
All msysGit development is now done on 'master' and the devel branches are deleted.
Tcl/Tk upgraded to 8.5.13.
InnoSetup updated to 5.5.3 (Unicode)

Bugfixes

Some changes to avoid clashing with cygwin quite so often.
The installer will attempt to handle files mirrored in the virtualstore.

Changes since Git-1.7.11-preview20120710

New Features

Comes with Git 1.8.0 plus Windows specific patches.
InnoSetup updated to 5.5.2

Bugfixes

Fixed icon backgrounds on low color systems
Avoid installer warnings during writability testing.
Fix bash prompt handling due to upstream changes.

Changes since Git-1.7.11-preview20120704

Bugfixes

Propagate error codes from git wrapper (issue #43, #45)
Include CAcert root certificates in SSL bundle (issue #37)

Changes since Git-1.7.11-preview20120620

New Features

Comes with the beautiful Git logo from http://git-scm.com/downloads/logos
The installer no longer asks for the directory and program group when updating
The installer now also auto-detects TortoisePlink that comes with TortoiseGit

Bugfixes

Git::SVN is correctly installed again
The default format for git help is HTML again
Replaced the git.cmd script with an exe wrapper to fix issue #36
Fixed executable detection to speed up help -a display.

Changes since Git-1.7.10-preview20120409

New Features

Comes with Git 1.7.11 plus Windows specific patches.
Updated curl to 7.26.0
Updated zlib to 1.2.7
Updated Inno Setup to 5.5.0 and avoid creating symbolic links (issue #16)
Updated openssl to 0.9.8x and support reading certificate files from Unicode paths (issue #24)
Version resource built into git executables.
Support the Large Address Aware feature to reduce chance out-of-memory on 64 bit windows when repacking large repositories.

Bugfixes

Please refer to the release notes for official Git 1.7.11.
Fix backspace/delete key handling in rxvt terminals.
Fixed TERM setting to avoid a warning from less.
Various fixes for handling unicode paths.

Changes since Git-1.7.9-preview20120201

New Features

Comes with Git 1.7.10 plus Windows specific patches.
UTF-8 file name support.

Bugfixes

Please refer to the release notes for official Git 1.7.10.
Clarifications in the installer.
Console output is now even thread-safer.
Better support for foreign remotes (Mercurial remotes are disabled for now, due to lack of a Python version that can be compiled within the development environment).
Git Cheetah no longer writes big log files directly to C:\.
Development environment: enhancements in the script to make a 64-bit setup.
Development environment: enhancements to the 64-bit Cheetah build.

Changes since Git-1.7.8-preview20111206

New Features

Comes with Git 1.7.9 plus Windows specific patches.
Improvements to the installer running application detection.

Bugfixes

Please refer to the release notes for official Git 1.7.9
Fixed initialization of the git-cheetah submodule in net-installer.
Fixed duplicated context menu items with git-cheetah on Windows 7.
Patched gitk to display filenames when run on a subdirectory.
Tabbed gitk preferences dialog to allow use on smaller screens.

Changes since Git-1.7.7.1-preview20111027

New Features

Comes with Git 1.7.8 plus Windows specific patches.
Updated Tcl/Tk to 8.5.11 and libiconv to 1.14
Some changes to support building with MSVC compiler.

Bugfixes

Please refer to the release notes for official Git 1.7.8
Git documentation submodule location fixed.

Changes since Git-1.7.7-preview20111014

New Features

Comes with Git 1.7.7.1 plus patches.

Bugfixes

Please refer to the release notes for official Git 1.7.7.1
Includes an important upstream fix for a bug that sometimes corrupts the git index file.

Changes since Git-1.7.6-preview20110708

New Features

Comes with Git 1.7.7 plus patches.
Updated gzip/gunzip and include unzip and gvim
Primary repositories moved to GitHub

Bugfixes

Please refer to the release notes for official Git 1.7.7
Re-enable vim highlighting
Fixed issue with libiconv/libiconv-2 location
Fixed regressions in Git Bash script
Fixed installation of mergetools for difftool and mergetool use and launching of beyond compare on windows.
Fixed warning about mising hostname during git fetch

Changes since Git-1.7.4-preview20110211

New Features

Comes with Git 1.7.6 plus patches.
Updates to various supporting tools (openssl, iconv, InnoSetup)

Bugfixes

Please refer to the release notes for official Git 1.7.6
Fixes to msys compat layer for directory entry handling and command line globbing.

Changes since Git-1.7.3.2-preview20101025

New Features

Comes with Git 1.7.4 plus patches.
Includes antiword to enable viewing diffs of .doc files
Includes poppler to enable viewing diffs of .pdf files
Removes cygwin paths from the bash shell PATH

Bugfixes

Please refer to the release notes for official Git 1.7.4

Changes since Git-1.7.3.1-preview20101002

New Features

Comes with Git 1.7.3.2 plus patches.

Changes since Git-1.7.2.3-preview20100911

New Features

Comes with Git 1.7.3.1 plus patches.
Updated to Vim 7.3, file-5.04 and InnoSetup 5.3.11

Bugfixes

Issue 528 (remove uninstaller from Start Menu) was fixed
Issue 527 (failing to find the certificate authority bundle) was fixed
Issue 524 (remove broken and unused sdl-config file) was fixed
Issue 523 (crash pushing to WebDAV remote) was fixed

Changes since Git-1.7.1-preview20100612

New Features

Comes with Git 1.7.2.3 plus patches.

Bugfixes

Issue 519 (build problem with compat/regex/regexec.c) was fixed
Issue 430 (size of panes not preserved in git-gui) was fixed
Issue 411 (git init failing to work with CIFS paths) was fixed
Issue 501 (failing to clone repo from root dir using relative path) was fixed

Changes since Git-1.7.0.2-preview20100309

New Features

Comes with Git 1.7.1 plus patches.

Bugfixes

Issue 27 (git-send-mail not working properly) was fixed again
Issue 433 (error while running git svn fetch) was fixed
Issue 427 (Gitk reports error: "couldn't compile regular expression pattern: invalid repetition count(s)") was fixed
Issue 192 (output truncated) was fixed again
Issue 365 (Out of memory? mmap failed) was fixed
Issue 387 (gitk reports "error: couldn't execute "git:" file name too long") was fixed
Issue 409 (checkout of large files to network drive fails on XP) was fixed
Issue 428 (The return value of git.cmd is not the same as git.exe) was fixed
Issue 444 (Git Bash Here returns a "File not found error" in Windows 7 Professional - 64 bits) was fixed
Issue 445 (git help does nothing) was fixed
Issue 450 (git --bare init shouldn't set the directory to hidden.) was fixed
Issue 456 (git script fails with error code 1) was fixed
Issue 469 (error launch wordpad in last netinstall) was fixed
Issue 474 (git update-index --index-info silently does nothing) was fixed
Issue 482 (Add documentation to avoid "fatal: $HOME not set" error) was fixed
Issue 489 (git.cmd issues warning if %COMSPEC% has spaces in it) was fixed
Issue 436 (mkdir : No such file or directory error while using git-svn to fetch or rebase) was fixed
Issue 440 (Uninstall does not remove cheetah.) was fixed
Issue 441 (Git-1.7.0.2-preview20100309.exe installer fails with unwritable msys-1.0.dll when ssh-agent is running) was fixed

Changes since Git-1.6.5.1-preview20091022

New Features

Comes with official Git 1.7.0.2.
Comes with Git-Cheetah (on 32-bit Windows only, for now).
Comes with connect.exe, a SOCKS proxy.
Tons of improvements in the installer, thanks to Sebastian Schuberth.
On Vista, if possible, symlinks are used for the built-ins.
Features Hany's dos2unix tool, thanks to Sebastian Schuberth.
Updated Tcl/Tk to version 8.5.8 (thanks Pat Thoyts!).
By default, only .git/ is hidden, to work around a bug in Eclipse (thanks to Erik Faye-Lund).

Bugfixes

Fixed threaded grep (thanks to Heiko Voigt).
git gui was fixed for all kinds of worktree-related failures (thanks Pat Thoyts).
git gui now fully supports themed widgets (thanks Pat Thoyts and Heiko Voigt).
Git no longer complains about an unset RUNTIME_PREFIX (thanks Johannes Sixt).
git gui can Explore Working Copy on Windows again (thanks Markus Heidelberg).
git gui can create shortcuts again (fixes issue 425, thanks Heiko Voigt).
When git checkout cannot overwrite files because they are in use, it will offer to try again, giving the user a chance to release the file (thanks Heiko Voigt).
Ctrl+W will close gitk (thanks Jens Lehmann).
git gui no longer binds Ctrl+C, which caused problems when trying to use said shortcut for the clipboard operation "Copy" (fixes issue 423, thanks Pat Thoyts).
gitk does not give up when the command line length limit is reached (issue 387).
The exit code is fixed when Git.cmd is called from cmd.exe (thanks Alexey Borzenkov).
When launched via the (non-Cheetah) shell extension, the window icon is now correct (thanks Sebastian Schuberth).
Uses a TrueType font for the console, to be able to render UTF-8 correctly.
Clarified the installer's line ending options (issue 370).
Substantially speeded up startup time from cmd unless NO_FSTAB_THREAD is set (thanks Johannes Sixt).
Update msys-1.0.dll yet again, to handle quoted parameters better (thanks Heiko Voigt).
Updated cURL to a version that supports SSPI.
Updated tar to handle the pax headers generated by git archive.
Updated sed to a version that can handle the filter-branch examples.
.git* files can be associated with the default text editor (issue 397).

Changes since Git-1.6.4-preview20090729

New Features

Comes with official git 1.6.5.1.
Thanks to Johan 't Hart, files and directories starting with a single dot (such as .git) will now be marked hidden (you can disable this setting with core.hideDotFiles=false in your config) (Issue 288).
Thanks to Thorvald Natvig, Git on Windows can simulate symbolic links by using reparse points when available. For technical reasons, this only works for symbolic links pointing to files, not directories.
A lot of work has been put into making it possible to compile Git's source code (the part written in C, of course, not the scripts) with Microsoft Visual Studio. This work is ongoing.
Thanks to Sebastian Schuberth, we only offer the (Tortoise)Plink option in the installer if the presence of Plink was detected and at least one Putty session was found..
Thanks to Sebastian Schuberth, the installer has a nicer icon now.
Some more work by Sebastian Schuberth was done on better integration of Plink (Issues 305 & 319).

Bugfixes

Thanks to Sebastian Schuberth, git svn picks up the SSH setting specified with the installer (Issue 305).

Changes since Git-1.6.3.2-preview20090608

New Features

Comes with official git 1.6.4.
Supports https:// URLs, thanks to Erik Faye-Lund.
Supports send-email, thanks to Erik Faye-Lund (Issue 27).
Updated Tcl/Tk to version 8.5.7, thanks to Pat Thoyts.

Bugfixes

The home directory is now discovered properly (Issues 108 & 259).
IPv6 is supported now, thanks to Martin Martin Storsjö (Issue 182).

Changes since Git-1.6.3-preview20090507

New Features

Comes with official git 1.6.3.2.
Uses TortoisePlink instead of Plink if available.

Bugfixes

Plink errors out rather than hanging when the user needs to accept a host key first (Issue 96).
The user home directory is inferred from $HOMEDRIVE\$HOMEPATH instead of $HOME (Issue 108).
The environment setting $CYGWIN=tty is ignored (Issues 138, 248 and 251).
The ls command shows non-ASCII filenames correctly now (Issue 188).
Adds more syntax files for vi (Issue 250).
$HOME/.bashrc is included last from /etc/profile, allowing .bashrc to override all settings in /etc/profile (Issue 255).
Completion is case-insensitive again (Issue 256).
The start command can handle arguments with spaces now (Issue 258).
For some Git commands (such as git commit), vi no longer "restores" the cursor position.

Changes since Git-1.6.2.2-preview20090408

New Features

Comes with official git 1.6.3.
Thanks to Marius Storm-Olsen, Git has a substantially faster readdir() implementation now.
Marius Storm-Olsen also contributed a patch to include nedmalloc, again speeding up Git noticably.
Compiled with GCC 4.4.0

Bugfixes

Portable Git contains a README.portable.
Portable Git now actually includes the builtins.
Portable Git includes git-cmd.bat and git-bash.bat.
Portable Git is now shipped as a .7z; it still is a self-extracting archive if you rename it to .exe.
Git includes the Perl Encode module now.
Git now includes the filter-branch tool.
There is a workaround for a Windows 7 regression triggering a crash in the progress reporting (e.g. during a clone). This fixes issues 236 and 247.
gitk tries not to crash when it is closed while reading references (Issue 125, thanks Pat Thoyts).
In some setups, hard-linking is not as reliable as it should be, so we have a workaround which avoids hard links in some situations (Issues 222 and 229).
git-svn sets core.autocrlf to false now, hopefully shutting up most of the git-svn reports.

Changes since Git-1.6.2.1-preview20090322

New Features

Comes with official git 1.6.2.2.
Upgraded Tcl/Tk to 8.5.5.
TortoiseMerge is supported by mergetool now.
Uses pthreads (faster garbage collection on multi-core machines).
The test suite passes!

Bugfixes

Renaming was made more robust (due to Explorer or some virus scanners, files could not be renamed at the first try, so we have to try multiple times).
Johannes Sixt made lots of changes to the test-suite to identify properly which tests should pass, and which ones cannot pass due to limitations of the platform.
Support PAGERs with spaces in their filename.
Quite a few changes were undone which we needed in the olden days of msysGit.
Fall back to / when HOME cannot be set to the real home directory due to locale issues (works around Issue 108 for the moment).

Changes since Git-1.6.2-preview20090308

New Features

Comes with official git 1.6.2.1.
A portable application is shipped in addition to the installer (Issue 195).
Comes with a Windows-specific mmap() implementation (Issue 198).

Bugfixes

ANSI control characters are no longer shown verbatim (Issue 124).
Temporary files are created respecting core.autocrlf (Issue 177).
The Git Bash prompt is colorful again (Issue 199).
Fixed crash when hardlinking during a clone failed (Issue 204).
An infinite loop was fixed in git-gui (Issue 205).
The ssh protocol is always used with plink.exe (Issue 209).
More vim files are shipped now, so that syntax highlighting works.

Changes since Git-1.6.1-preview20081225

New Features

Comes with official git 1.6.2.
Comes with upgraded vim 7.2.
Compiled with GCC 4.3.3.
The user can choose the preferred CR/LF behavior in the installer now.
Peter Kodl contributed support for hardlinks on Windows.
The bash prompt shows information about the current repository.

Bugfixes

If supported by the file system, pack files can grow larger than 2gb.
Comes with updated msys-1.0.dll (should fix some Vista issues).
Assorted fixes to support the new libexec/git-core/ layout better.
Read-only files can be properly replaced now.
git-svn is included again (original caveats still apply).
Obsolete programs from previous installations are cleaned up.

Changes since Git-1.6.0.2-preview20080923

New Features

Comes with official git 1.6.1.
Avoid useless console windows.
Installer remembers how to handle PATH.

Changes since Git-1.6.0.2-preview20080921

Bugfixes

ssh works again.
git add -p works again.
Various programs that aborted with Assertion failed: argv0_path are fixed.

Changes since Git-1.5.6.1-preview20080701

Removed Features
git svn is excluded from the end-user installer (see Known Issues).

New Features

Comes with official git 1.6.0.2.

Bugfixes

No Windows-specific bugfixes.

Changes since Git-1.5.6-preview20080622

New Features

Comes with official git 1.5.6.1.

Bugfixes

Includes fixed msys-1.0.dll that supports Vista and Windows Server 2008 (Issue 122).
cmd wrappers do no longer switch off echo.

Changes since Git-1.5.5-preview20080413

New Features

Comes with official git 1.5.6.
Installer supports configuring a user provided Plink (PuTTY).

Bugfixes

Comes with tweaked msys-1.0.dll to solve some command line mangling issues.
cmd wrapper does no longer close the command window.
Programs in the system PATH, for example editors, can be launched from Git without specifying their full path.
git stash apply stash@{1} works.
Comes with basic ANSI control code emulation for the Windows console to avoid wrapping of pull/merge's diffstats.
Git correctly passes port numbers to PuTTY's Plink

Changes since Git-1.5.4-preview20080202

New Features

Comes with official git 1.5.5.
core.autocrlf is enabled (true) by default. This means git converts to Windows line endings (CRLF) during checkout and converts to Unix line endings (LF) during commit. This is the right choice for cross-platform projects. If the conversion is not reversible, git warns the user. The installer warns about the new default before the installation starts.
The user does no longer have to "accept" the GPL but only needs to press "continue".
Installer deletes shell scripts that have been replaced by builtins. Upgrading should be safer.
Supports git svn. Note that the performance might be below your expectation.

Bugfixes

Newer ssh fixes connection failures (issue 74).
Comes with MSys-1.0.11-20071204. This should solve some "fork: resource unavailable" issues.
All DLLs are rebased to avoid problems with "fork" on Vista.

Changes since Git-1.5.3.6-preview20071126

New Features

Comes with official git 1.5.4.
Some commands that are not yet suppoted on Windows are no longer included (see Known Issues above).
Release notes are displayed in separate window.
Includes qsort replacement to improve performance on Windows 2000.

Bugfixes

Fixes invalid error message that setup.ini cannot be deleted on uninstall.
Setup tries harder to finish the installation and reports more detailed errors.
Vim's syntax highlighting is suitable for dark background.

Changes since Git-1.5.3.5-preview20071114

New Features

Git is included in version 1.5.3.6.
Setup displays release notes.

Bugfixes

pull/fetch/push in git-gui works. Note, there is no way for ssh to ask for a passphrase or for confirmation if you connect to an unknown host. So, you must have ssh set up to work without passphrase. Either you have a key without passphrase, or you started ssh-agent. You may also consider using PuTTY by pointing GIT_SSH to plink.exe and handle your ssh keys with Pageant. In this case you should include your login name in urls. You must also connect to an unknown host once from the command line and confirm the host key, before you can use it from git-gui.

Changes since Git-1.5.3-preview20071027

New Features

Git is included in version 1.5.3.5.
Setup can be installed as normal user.
When installing as Administrator, all icons except the Quick Launch icon will be created for all users.
git help user-manual displays the user manual.

Bugfixes

Git Bash works on Windows XP 64.

Changes since Git-1.5.3-preview20071019

Bugfixes

The templates for a new repository are found.
The global configuration /etc/gitconfig is found.
Git Gui localization works. It falls back to English if a translation has errors.

Changes since WinGit-0.2-alpha

The history of the release notes stops here. Various new features and bugfixes are available since WinGit-0.2-alpha. Please check the git history of the msysgit project for details.

Files

ReleaseNotes.md

Latest commit

History

ReleaseNotes.md

File metadata and controls

Git for Windows v2.31.1 Release Notes

Introduction

Known issues

Licenses

Changes since Git for Windows v2.31.1 (March 27th 2021)

New Features

Changes since Git for Windows v2.31.0 (March 15th 2021)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.30.2 (March 9th 2021)

New Features

Changes since Git for Windows v2.30.1 (February 9th 2021)

New Features

Changes since Git for Windows v2.30.0(2) (January 14th 2021)

New Features

Changes since Git for Windows v2.30.0 (December 28th 2020)

New Features

Changes since Git for Windows v2.29.2(3) (December 8th 2020)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.29.2(2) (November 4th 2020)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.29.2 (October 30th 2020)

New Features

Changes since Git for Windows v2.29.1 (October 23rd 2020)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.29.0 (October 19th 2020)

New Features

Changes since Git for Windows v2.28.0 (July 28th 2020)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.27.0 (June 1st 2020)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.26.2 (April 20th 2020)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.26.1 (April 9th 2020)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.26.0 (March 23rd 2020)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.25.1 (February 19th 2020)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.25.0 (January 13th 2020)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.24.1(2) (December 10th 2019)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.24.0(2) (November 6th 2019)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.24.0 (November 4th 2019)

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.23.0 (August 17th 2019)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.22.0 (June 8th 2019)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.21.0 (February 26th 2019)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.20.1 (December 15th 2018)

New Features

Bug Fixes

Changes since Git for Windows v2.20.0 (December 10th 2018)

New Features

Bug Fixes