GIT 0.99.8

Here is 0.99.8.  GIT has been doing everything I personally
wanted it to do since mid 0.99.7, and now it has almost
everything I want it to contain, except for a couple of minor
points.  I feel that we are ready to finish the last mile for
1.0.  Many thanks to everybody who contributed the comments,
eyeballs, and code.


Done in 0.99.8
==============

New Features, Commands, and Enhancements
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* 'git pull' now uses 'git-merge' instead of 'git-resolve', so you can
  specify alternative merge strategy to use on its command line.

* 'git pull -s recursive' has been taught about renaming merges,
  which may deal with HPA's klibc vs klibc-kbuild situation better.

* Symbolic refs -- instead of using symlinks to express .git/HEAD,
  you can have a regular file that stores a single line
  'ref: refs/heads/master' in it.

  git-update-ref is the preferred way to write into .git/HEAD,
  not "echo >.git/HEAD".  git-symbolic-ref is the preferred way
  to check which underlying ref a symbolic ref .git/HEAD refers
  to, not "readlink .git/HEAD".

* A couple of new diff options (-l<num> and --name-status).

* Commit walker over http acquired more SSL options.

* 'git clone' checks out the working tree by default.


Fixes
~~~~~

* Removed unused commands (diff-helper, rev-tree, and export).

* Platforms with only Python 2.3 installed can use recursive merge
  strategy.

* Octopus documented.

* Merge is more careful noticing potentially ambiguous situation. 

* Git pull does not blindly do Octopus when Pull: lines in remotes
  file specifies more than one remote branches.

* Commit walker got safer to use after interrupted downloads.

* Commit walker over http can resume partial downloads.

* More portability fixes for BSD and Solaris.