[ANNOUNCE] Git for Windows 2.16.1(3)

[Johannes Schindelin]

Dear Git users,

It is my pleasure to announce that Git for Windows 2.16.1(3) is available from:

https://git-for-windows.github.io/

Changes since Git for Windows v2.16.1(2) (February 2nd 2018)

New Features

* Git for Windows' SDK packages are now hosted on Azure Blobs, fixing
part of issue #1479.
* Comes with perl-Net-SSLeay v1.84.

Bug Fixes

* When http.sslBackend is not configured (e.g. in portable Git or
MinGit), fetch/push operations no longer crash.
* On Windows 7 and older, Git for Windows v2.16.1(2) was no longer
able to spawn any processes (e.g. during fetch/clone). This
regression has been fixed.
* The Perl upgrade in v2.16.1(2) broke git send-email; This has been
fixed by updating the Net-SSLeay Perl module.

Filename | SHA-256
-------- | -------
Git-2.16.1.3-64-bit.exe | 27cec5113e2572d22336150afec337fc94627b330ebeec2a61b8bb447a6301ea
Git-2.16.1.3-32-bit.exe | ad1fca7ac33326378b8be187d4595f50c72bd8ad00b277807fc091c16bd9796c
PortableGit-2.16.1.3-64-bit.7z.exe | bcb3ca27ae151313ab369d9f39b018129035d7fa018fa0df364424b6e22be4d3
PortableGit-2.16.1.3-32-bit.7z.exe | ae4cf93c391c66698856b8b38ba3a42e7fcc7141f61531562134f72b1c014f36
MinGit-2.16.1.3-64-bit.zip | a3ee17301ef563349f9936e68beb996c747079afc883e4e40615931e032905fd
MinGit-2.16.1.3-32-bit.zip | c46c6697906a1a85f784c7cf6e0385689ae3105bc8fe99b20c3a70ac73ab8e9e
MinGit-2.16.1.3-busybox-64-bit.zip | 630bb6d79c9b0f64c81046208d00a41edb2540bd99a2626c5fdaf0550cdb1a9e
MinGit-2.16.1.3-busybox-32-bit.zip | 3ff6f9e936d837d6f319bdb1ea4f0fcc9ff6bc203f9de1987538313686574f1b
Git-2.16.1.3-64-bit.tar.bz2 | c7c4f9a9205e85977475698732484c6524d8b381f03ceaf04f35bd6f89bce389
Git-2.16.1.3-32-bit.tar.bz2 | 8ed49c8008728c70e82436d8c1cafb23cb2ee1f7b01d2e97a7e626d2438a0cd1

Ciao,
Johannes

[Johannes Schindelin]

Dear Git for Windows SDK users,

[This mail only concerns the *SDK* of Git for Windows, i.e. the build
environment to work on, and contribute to, Git for Windows.]

On Tue, 6 Feb 2018, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

> Changes since Git for Windows v2.16.1(2) (February 2nd 2018)
>
> New Features
>
> * Git for Windows' SDK packages are now hosted on Azure Blobs, fixing
> part of issue #1479.

To clarify what this means for any developer who wants to update or
install a Git for Windows SDK, here is some guidance.

# Fixing existing SDKs

You can fix your existing SDK (if you installed it successfully before
Friday, February 2nd 2018) by downloading either

- https://wingit.blob.core.windows.net/x86-64/git-extra-1.1.241.91af289c6-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
for 64-bit SDKs, or
- https://wingit.blob.core.windows.net/x86-64/git-extra-1.1.241.91af289c6-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz
for 32-bit SDKs,

and then executing `pacman -U <downloaded-file>`. This will have the main
effect of updating your `/etc/pacman.conf` so that a subsequent `pacman
-Syu` will find the new home of Git for Windows' Pacman repositories.

# Initializing a new SDK

If you did not yet have a working SDK, the [installer as per Git for
Windows' home page](https://gitforwindows.org/#download-sdk) will not work
(I hope that we get all of this sorted out this week).

The idea is to support a completely new, more robust method of obtaining a
working SDK:

```cmd
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/git-for-windows/git-sdk-64
```

(or `.../git-sdk-32` for 32-bit setups) and then call `git-bash.exe` in
the top-level directory of the checkout.

(These repositories are essentially synchronized by a scheduled job
running on Visual Studio Team Services, and the set of installed packages
was chosen so as to support the most common operations developer would
want to perform in a Git for Windows SDK.)

This does already work!

But you still have to clone https://github.com/git-for-windows/git
manually for the time being (preferred checkout location: /usr/src/git),
and maybe also https://github.com/git-for-windows/build-extra.

## Future work

I plan on doing a couple more things in the git-sdk-* repositories, and
every bit of help with those tasks will be greatly appreciated:

- add a `README.md` explaining the purpose, the most common operations,
context and design
- modify
[`/etc/profile.d/git-sdk.sh`](https://github.com/git-for-windows/build-extra/blob/master/git-extra/git-sdk.sh)
so that it auto-initializes the `git`, `build-extra`, `MINGW-packages` and
`MSYS2-packages` worktrees in `/usr/src`: they should only be `git
init`'ed and `git add remote origin ...`, but *not* fetching anything yet.
They can then be initialized on demand by e.g. `git -C /usr/src/git pull
origin master`
- ensure that a regular clone works, especially 32-bit, where some of the
files seem to be committed with incorrect line endings
- modify the git-sdk-installer to use the new method instead
- maybe add an `/etc/motd` that describes how to build stuff, how to
bundle a custom installer, how to keep the SDK up-to-date, etc. Or maybe
a helper. Dunno.

This blurb was copy-edited from
https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/issues/1479#issuecomment-363452826

For updates on the Git for Windows SDK front, please follow that ticket!

Thanks,
Johannes