Re: [PATCH v2] doc: use 'rev' instead of 'commit' for merge-base arguments

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 4, 2020, 17:26 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqzhcw3uc7.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqd09s5atg.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> ... another important
> point (i.e. when a command wants to take a commit but a user gives
> it a tag that points at a commit, the command almost always accepts
> the tag, finds the commit the tag points at, and uses that commit
> instead of the tag ...

A side note I forgot to add. A few commands take both commit and tag but want to do different things depending on the kind of object they get, and for them, <commit> and <commit-ish> should be used carefully in the documentation.

For example, "git cat-file commit v2.25.0" and "git cat-file tag v2.25.0" do two different things. They should be described as

	$ git cat-file commit <commit-ish>
	$ git cat-file tag <tag>

"git merge <commit>" and "git merge <tag>" do different things, even though <tag> must be a <commit-ish>.

But most of the Git subcommands (including the "cat-file commit" case) peel a tag as needed, so these special cases are minority.