diff --git a/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.txt b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..7f05936e44
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+Git v1.7.9 Release Notes (draft)
+========================
+
+Updates since v1.7.8
+--------------------
+
+ * Porcelain commands like "git reset" did not distinguish deletions
+   and type-changes from ordinary modification, and reported them with
+   the same 'M' moniker. They now use 'D' (for deletion) and 'T' (for
+   type-change) to match "git status -s" and "git diff --name-status".
+
+ * fsck and prune are relatively lengthy operations that still go
+   silent while making the end-user wait. They learned to give progress
+   output like other slow operations.
+
+ * The set of built-in function-header patterns for various languages
+   knows MATLAB.
+
+May also contain documentation updates and code clean-ups.
+
+
+Fixes since v1.7.8
+------------------
+
+ * In some codepaths (notably, checkout and merge), the ignore patterns
+   recorded in $GIT_DIR/info/exclude were not honored. They now are.
+   (merge fc001b5 nd/maint-ignore-exclude later to maint).
diff --git a/GIT-VERSION-GEN b/GIT-VERSION-GEN
index a04c8f32b7..e18a30a16a 100755
--- a/GIT-VERSION-GEN
+++ b/GIT-VERSION-GEN
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 #!/bin/sh
 
 GVF=GIT-VERSION-FILE
-DEF_VER=v1.7.8
+DEF_VER=v1.7.8.GIT
 
 LF='
 '
diff --git a/RelNotes b/RelNotes
index 7d9276973a..766bbaf8f5 120000
--- a/RelNotes
+++ b/RelNotes
@@ -1 +1 @@
-Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.txt
\ No newline at end of file
+Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.txt
\ No newline at end of file