Git 2.56-rc0 Released: Swift Support and Updated Contributor Guidelines

The Git development team has put out the first preview build for testing — Git 2.56-rc0. Work on the project continues with an eye toward the future Git 3.0, which will make SHA-256 hashes and a branch named “main” the defaults, along with a number of other backward-incompatible changes. This major release could land closer to the end of 2026.

Internal improvements

In Git 2.56, the ORT merge backend has been made more resilient to corrupt trees. Beyond that, the release includes a host of low-level refinements and other improvements to the distributed version control system.

For developers, support for userdiff patterns has been added for the Swift language. Git now recognizes Swift-specific constructs — attributes, modifiers, failable initializers and generics — which improves how changes are displayed in diffs.

Betting on b4 and new guidelines

The release ships with a dedicated configuration for the b4 tool — recommended to simplify submitting patches to the Git project.

Separately, the documentation covering community contribution guidelines has been updated. Contributors are now advised to wait at least a day before sending a new version of their patches to the mailing list: this gives reviewers enough time to study the previous version. In addition, the guidelines explicitly state that it is better to announce planned edits in an existing discussion thread rather than quietly sending a new version of the patches and leaving the earlier discussion unfinished.

The documentation also recommends using b4, employing shallow threading of cover letters, and offers a number of other tips.

The full list of changes and fixes in Git 2.56-rc0 is available in the project's mailing list announcement.

Source: Phoronix