Git update offers devs monumental speed boost
Git developers hope to make merge-ort the default merge strategy backend
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
The new release of the popularopen sourceversion control system, Git, enablesdevelopersto experience a new merge scheme, which could become default by the time the next version rolls out.
Git was originally developed by Linus Torvalds, popularly known as the developer and principle maintainer of theLinuxkernel. Git v2.33 brings with it 449 new changes, though a majority of them are backend improvements.
“As can be seen here, it turns out that this release does not have many end-user facing changes and new features, but a lot of fixes and internal improvements went into the codebase during this cycle,” wrote Git’s core maintainer, Junio C Hamano, in therelease announcement.
However, Hamano points out that the highlight of the release is the work on the new merge strategy backend, known as merge-ort.
New merge scheme
Git’s strategy backend kicks in every time the tool performs a merge between two code branches. Git’s original strategy was called resolve, but was soon replaced by merge-recursive.
Explaining the needfor a new merge scheme, Taylor Blau, Senior Software Engineer, Git at GitHub writes that while merge-recursive did a stellar job, it suffered a number of shortcomings. Originally written inPython, before a rewrite in C, it wasn’t particularly snappy and generally “harder to optimize.”
“The merge-ort strategy is a from-scratch rewrite with the same concepts (recursion and rename-detection), but solving many of the long-standing correctness and performance problems. The result ismuchfaster,” writes Blau, suggesting that in certain use cases the new merge scheme reported speed gains of over 9000x.
Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter
Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!
In the release announcement, Hamano points out that developers can test the new backend in the current release with thegit merge -sortcommand.
With almost two decades of writing and reporting on Linux, Mayank Sharma would like everyone to think he’sTechRadar Pro’sexpert on the topic. Of course, he’s just as interested in other computing topics, particularly cybersecurity, cloud, containers, and coding.
Key Strategies for financial institutions to combat fraud
This dangerous new malware is hitting Windows devices by hiding in games
Steps to take when your phone number is publicly listed online
