From 66a062a1259000669cec0a8105a807a67b9287ef Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Matthieu Moy Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2010 22:06:20 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] user-manual.txt: explain better the remote(-tracking) branch terms Now that the documentation is mostly consistant in the use of "remote branch" Vs "remote-tracking branch", let's make this distinction explicit early in the user-manual. Signed-off-by: Matthieu Moy Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano --- Documentation/user-manual.txt | 19 ++++++++++++++++--- 1 file changed, 16 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/user-manual.txt b/Documentation/user-manual.txt index d70f3e04ff..85b3175ff6 100644 --- a/Documentation/user-manual.txt +++ b/Documentation/user-manual.txt @@ -344,7 +344,8 @@ Examining branches from a remote repository The "master" branch that was created at the time you cloned is a copy of the HEAD in the repository that you cloned from. That repository may also have had other branches, though, and your local repository -keeps branches which track each of those remote branches, which you +keeps branches which track each of those remote branches, called +remote-tracking branches, which you can view using the "-r" option to linkgit:git-branch[1]: ------------------------------------------------ @@ -359,6 +360,13 @@ $ git branch -r origin/todo ------------------------------------------------ +In this example, "origin" is called a remote repository, or "remote" +for short. The branches of this repository are called "remote +branches" from our point of view. The remote-tracking branches listed +above were created based on the remote branches at clone time and will +be updated by "git fetch" (hence "git pull") and "git push". See +<> for details. + You cannot check out these remote-tracking branches, but you can examine them on a branch of your own, just as you would a tag: @@ -1716,14 +1724,19 @@ one step: $ git pull origin master ------------------------------------------------- -In fact, if you have "master" checked out, then by default "git pull" -merges from the HEAD branch of the origin repository. So often you can +In fact, if you have "master" checked out, then this branch has been +configured by "git clone" to get changes from the HEAD branch of the +origin repository. So often you can accomplish the above with just a simple ------------------------------------------------- $ git pull ------------------------------------------------- +This command will fetch changes from the remote branches to your +remote-tracking branches `origin/*`, and merge the default branch into +the current branch. + More generally, a branch that is created from a remote-tracking branch will pull by default from that branch. See the descriptions of the -- 2.11.4.GIT