Git 2.56 refuses to stage a conflict you have not fixed
The release adds a conflict-only staging mode and trims wasted history walks, on the work of more than 104 contributors.
Git 2.56 has shipped, and its most useful addition is a small, deliberate one: a staging command that will not let you stage a conflict you have not actually fixed.
The release collects work from more than 104 contributors, 39 of them new to the project.
A narrower way to stage a resolved conflict
Resolving a merge conflict comes in two halves. You edit the working tree until each conflicted path holds the result you want, then you stage those paths to tell Git the conflict is settled. The second half is where people slip: git add -u sweeps up every modified tracked path, which during a merge can include unrelated local edits, or a file that still has conflict markers inside it. Git 2.56 adds git add --resolved, which considers only paths that are currently unmerged in the index. Before staging anything it scans those files for leftover conflict markers; if it finds one, it reports the affected paths and leaves the index unchanged.
The all-or-nothing marker check still applies inside any pathspec you hand it, while resolved deletions and binary conflicts, which carry no textual markers, stage as normal. The new mode is deliberately narrower than -u or -A: it cannot be combined with either, and it ignores tracked files that were never conflicted, which makes it a useful safety rail for maintainers whose working tree already contains unrelated changes.
Fewer wasted walks through history
The other headline change is quieter but wider. Git constantly needs the best common ancestor of two commits, whether for a merge, a three-dot diff or the pull-request comparisons that repository hosts run all day. Version 2.56 stops searching as soon as no further merge bases can exist.
Our opinion
Most Git releases are judged by what they add. This one is better judged by what it refuses to do. --resolved is the kind of guardrail that only sounds obvious to anyone who has watched a conflict marker get committed to main, and it costs nothing to the people who have not. Shipping fewer ways to make a mess is a mature way to spend a release.