Git 2.48-rc0 Released With git-fsck Warning Over "Curiously Formatted" Ref Contents

Git maintainer Junio Hamano today announced Git 2.48-rc0 as the first test release toward the Git 2.48 distributed version control system release.

Git 2.48 like most updates to this leading open-source VCS has a wide-range of changes, fixes, and new optimizations. Some of the Git 2.48 highlights include:

- Improving the user experience of the "git mergetool" functionality when the command errors out.

- The "git fsck" tool will now issue warnings on "curiously formatted" ref contents. The "curiously formatted" ref contents are something treated as valid contents but that Git itself wouldn't have written such as missing terminating end-of-line or trailing garbage. The warnings can be useful if the contents were modified by third-party software or perhaps if malformed maliciously or other causes for concern. In future Git versions such unofficially formatted refs might be raised to becoming an error but in Git 2.48 will simply be a warning from git-fsck.

- Continued work toward ultimately allowing Meson to be the primary build tool for Git in the future.

- C23 compatibility updates as well as GCC 15 compiler compatibility updates.

- Many documentation updates.

- Many bug fixes.

The full list of changes to find with Git 2.48-rc0 can be found via the release announcement.