Git 2.56 changes the merge-base search to stop once one side's exclusively painted commits are exhausted. GitHub reports a monorepo case falling from 0.68s to 0.01s, with production evaluations averaging about 20x faster in one repo and often around 70x in another.
Path-walk repacking now works with reachability bitmaps and delta islands, removing two blockers for hosts. In GitHub's Fluent UI benchmarkA standard public test set for comparing AI models — the shared scoreboards behind every "model X beats model Y" claim.Full definition → it produced a 164.4 MB pack versus 558.5 MB for a normal bitmapped repack, though it is still not on by default.
The experimental git history command gains drop, which removes a commit and replays its descendants onto its parent. It aborts on conflicts and cannot drop root or merge commits or run on history containing merges.
git branch --delete-merged bulk-deletes local branches whose tips are reachable from their matching upstreams. It supports --dry-run and skips branches checked out in a worktree, branches with missing upstreams, and any branch with deleteMerged set to false.
Partial clones can now discard large blobs fetched on demand using git repack --filter=blob:limit=<size> --drop-filtered, refetching them from the promisor remote later. It is a manual cleanup, not an automatically bounded cache, and only supports blob:limit filters.
Terms in this piece · Glossary
benchmark — A standard public test set for comparing AI models — the shared scoreboards behind every "model X beats model Y" claim.
Why it matters
git add --resolved stages only unmerged paths and refuses files still containing conflict markers, avoiding accidental staging of unrelated edits. Useful when agents or humans resolve merges.
