This should already work. If not on your platform, it is a bug. Please contact the support with details.

Reason is the new Windows build. This is fixed  in SmartGit 25.1 preview from https://www.syntevo.com/smartgit/preview/

Just for the records why we have implemented it the way it is: the option is automatically reset for local files if a different one is selected (to avoid unintentionally commit unseen whitespace changes); in committed files it is preserved

Could you please show a screenshot of the log illustrating the other branches that should be updated, too?

Which exact options should be respected?

According to my knowledge Windows behaves differently than Linux/MacOS. While Windows has a central place to configure environment variables, those on Linux/MacOS usually are configured in some shell scripts. But when launching a Linux/MacOS GUI application from its icon, those shell scripts are not executed and hence have a different environment. A quick workaround would be to start SmartGit from such a shell instead of starting it from the GUI icon.

This is no bug, but a change of Java: https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8187041

You can search a branch in the Ctrl+P popup.

Git only supports the concept of tracked *branches*, not tracked *tags*.

Why not commit/push even unfinished code into your feature branch? SmartGit offers all sorts of features to clean up this "mess" later, so it would look like done right from the beginning.