Git's First Major Release in 11 Years: What's in Git 3.0

I know nothing about Git development, but it surprised me that most of the changes are kind of internal and affect the end user only on security or performance level.

For some reason, I was thinking there would be more new shiny features. But maybe for the tool that is as mature and wide-used as Git, that's not how it works.

Author here. Git 3.0 is the first major version in 11 years.

Key takeaways:

- SHA-256 becoming default (brian m. carlson has done ~100 of 200-400 needed patches)

- Rust becoming mandatory build requirement (controversial but necessary for memory safety)

- Reftable format shows 22x performance improvement in benchmarks

- Timeline depends on getting Git forges (GitHub, GitLab) ready with SHA-256 support

The Rust decision is particularly interesting - Patrick Steinhardt's proposal is a "trial balloon" to gauge ecosystem readiness. Happy to answer questions!

The headline of this post is misleading. The actual headline:

Git 3.0 on the Horizon: What Git Users Need to Know About the Next Major Release