From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2020 17:26:00 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] doc: use 'rev' instead of 'commit' for merge-base arguments
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:

> ... 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.