Git 2.49-rc0 Released With "git backfill", zlib-ng Preparations & Rust Interface

Written by Michael Larabel in Programming on 26 February 2025 at 01:57 PM EST. 25 Comments

Git maintainer Junio C Hamano announced Git 2.49-rc0 today as an early preview release for the next version of this widely-used, distributed version control system.

Git 2.49-rc0 is introducing a git backfill sub-command, updated gitk, completion script updates for zsh, adding an "unsafe-sha1" build knob to the Meson build system integration, a Rust foreign language interface that is a wrapper for libgit.a, and Zlib integration enhancements in preparation for being able to build Git with zlib-ng. Some of the key highlights from the Git 2.49-rc0 release announcement:

* "git pack-objects" and its wrapper "git repack" learned an option to use an alternative path-hash function to improve delta-base selection to produce a packfile with deeper history than window size.

* "git clone" learned to make a shallow clone for a single commit that is not necessarily be at the tip of any branch.

* Lazy-loading missing files in a blobless clone on demand is costly as it tends to be one-blob-at-a-time. "git backfill" is introduced to help bulk-download necessary files beforehand.

* Following the procedure we established to introduce breaking changes for Git 3.0, allow an early opt-in for removing support of $GIT_DIR/branches/ and $GIT_DIR/remotes/ directories to configure remotes.

* Foreign language interface for Rust into our code base has been added.

There are also many bug fixes and more. Additional information on the many new features and fixes coming for Git 2.49 can be found via today's 2.49-rc0 announcement.