From: Matthieu Moy Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2010 06:08:41 GMT Subject: [PATCH 09/10] user-manual.txt: explain better the remote(-tracking) branch terms Message-ID: <1287986922-16308-10-git-send-email-Matthieu.Moy@imag.fr> In-Reply-To: <1287851481-27952-1-git-send-email-Matthieu.Moy@imag.fr> 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 --- Documentation/user-manual.txt | 17 +++++++++++++++-- 1 files changed, 15 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/user-manual.txt b/Documentation/user-manual.txt index d70f3e0..6684a78 100644 --- a/Documentation/user-manual.txt +++ b/Documentation/user-manual.txt @@ -359,6 +359,14 @@ $ git branch -r origin/todo ------------------------------------------------ +In this case, "origin" is called a remote repository, or "remote" for +short. The branches of this repository are called "remote branches" +from our point of view, and Git will keep a copy of these +branches, called "remote-tracking branches" in the local repository. +These remote-tracking branches are references that will be updated by +"git fetch" (hence by "git pull"). 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 the changes from the remote branches to your +remote-tracking branches `origin/*`, and merge default branch in 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 -- 1.7.3.2.183.g2e7b0