[RFC - draft] List of proposed future changes that are backward incompatible

Here is a draft; please discuss items that are already on the list to improve their wording, and propose changes you would want to add to the list, so that I can send the final message out when I tag v1.6.2-rc2.

I originally considered to Cc: mailing list addresses of various projects that use git when sending out the final message, but I do not think it is practical, as I suspect some/many are subscriber only (and I am not, and would not want to be, a subscriber to them).

So instead, I'd like people from the projects that use git to forward the final message to the mailing lists they belong to, and we would want some coordination among volunteers to avoid duplicated forwards.

Somebody, please volunteer to keep a list of <project name, volunteering forwarder> tuples. It might be a good idea to create a new page that is linked from http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitProjects for that purpose.

Thanks.

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To: git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: [RFC/WARNING] Proposed future changes that are backward incompatible

Here is a list of possible future changes to git that are backward incompatible that are under discussion on the git mailing list.

None of them will be in the upcoming 1.6.2 release, but some of them are likely to appear in future versions. If you think we should not introduce some of the listed changes, here is a chance to voice your opinions and make a convincing argument against them, so please do so. Many people complained about the removal of many git-foo commands from user's PATH, which was done in 1.6.0 based on user input, after it happened. You do not want to see such a mess happen again.

Thanks.

* git-push to update the checked out branch will be refused by default

  Make "git push" into a repository to update the branch that is checked
  out fail by default.

  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/107758/focus=108007

* git-push to delete the current branch will be refused by default

  Make "git push $there :$killed" to delete the branch that is pointed at
  by its HEAD fail by default.

  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/108862/focus=108936

* git-send-email won't make deep threads by default

  Many people said that by default when sending more than 2 patches the
  threading git-send-email makes by default is hard to read, and they
  prefer the default be one cover letter and each patch as a direct
  follow-up to the cover letter.

  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/109790

* make core.quotepath=false the default

  By default, "git diff" output quotes bytes in pathnames with high bit
  set, primarily to avoid corruption during e-mail based transfer.  This
  however is inconvenient for human readers, and also makes some poorly
  written user scripts that do not unquote them fail.  Change the default
  so that they are not quoted (note that control characters such as HT are
  always quoted).

  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/110033