With our current framework this will be rather hard to do.

Will be present in version 17.1

We felt 10 is a reasonable value and it's not likely to be changed. You can still change it but not from the GUI but only using system properties: https://www.syntevo.com/doc/display/SG/System+Properties#SystemProperties-Journal

You may want to vote for https://smartgit.userecho.com/topics/256

In version 7 you see "pushable" commits, in version 8 you see "ahead" commits because from a branch perspective this is usually more reasonable. As you have highlighted, this is only a problem for new branches without a remote counterpart, because they are "ahead all commits". On the other hand it's correct and showing pushable commits only in this case seems wrong to me.

An option will be present in the next 8.1 preview build. You can already give the functionality a try in latest build 9063: Help|Check for Latest Build

I've uploaded SmartGit 8.1 Preview build 9059 which will detect renames for added/removed and even untracked/missing files. Commit and Discard commands will be able to work with the rename file pair, all other commands will simply work on the added (or untracked) file. The entire integration is probably not perfect yet, so please let me know about possible problems.

If you don't know the location in the file, it will be hard to locate the change even with Perforce, I guess. Also, have a look at the two-panes approach of DeepGit:

http://www.syntevo.com/deepgit/