Git 2.29-rc0 Released With SHA-256 In Experimental State, Restores Protocol v2 Default

Git 2.29 is on the way with today marking the availability of the initial release candidate.

Back during the Git 2.26 cycle the distributed revision control system's transport protocol v2 became the default. But then during Git 2.27, that default was reverted due to "remaining rough edges." But now that the Git Transport Protocol v2 implementation has been improved upon, for Git 2.29 they have switched back to the new version as the default. This documentation outlines all of the improvements in the protocol v2 state.

Also notable with Git 2.29 is "the final leg" of the SHA-256 transition support for hashes has landed. This is in providing a path from SHA1 to SHA256 for commit hashes given that it's becoming possible for pulling off SHA1 collisions. With Git 2.29 it's looking like the SHA-256 support is now very usable, but there isn't yet any inter-operability between SHA-1 and SHA-256 for repositories. That will come in the future so SHA-1 and SHA-256 repositories can mingle. Enabling the SHA-256 support can be done with the --object-format=sha256 but for now is still treated as an experimental option.

More details on the current Git support for SHA-256 via this documentation.

Git 2.29-rc0 also has a number of command improvements, git maintenance introduced for carrying out Git repository maintenance tasks, many fixes, and other changes.

More details on the Git 2.29-rc0 test release via the mailing list announcement.