# man pages oddity from git-fetch.txt

1 messages from 2009-06-25 to 2009-06-25. Participants: Ralf Wildenhues.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/19931

## Ralf Wildenhues, 2009-06-25 17:18

Subject: man pages oddity from git-fetch.txt
Message-ID: <20090625171819.GM19869@ins.uni-bonn.de>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20090625171819.GM19869%40ins.uni-bonn.de

```
Hello giters,

git-fetch.1 and git-pull.1 from the man branch bogusly display for me
like this:

       -a, --append
           Append ref names and object names of fetched refs to the existing contents of will
           be overwritten.

with man 2.5.1, GNU groff 1.18.1 (note the part about FETCH_HEAD is
missing).  This apparently changed in 5ca22945a:man1/git-fetch.1:

-Append ref names and object names of fetched refs to the existing contents of \.git/FETCH_HEAD\
+Append ref names and object names of fetched refs to the existing contents of
+\.git/FETCH_HEAD\. Without this option old data in
+\.git/FETCH_HEAD
+will be overwritten\.

induced by 93d69d86: Refactored merge options into separate merge-options.txt.

--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/fetch-options.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+-a, \--append::
+       Append ref names and object names of fetched refs to the
+       existing contents of `.git/FETCH_HEAD`.  Without this
+       option old data in `.git/FETCH_HEAD` will be overwritten.

[...]
--a, \--append::
-       Append ref names and object names of fetched refs to the
-       existing contents of $GIT_DIR/FETCH_HEAD.  Without this
-       option old data in $GIT_DIR/FETCH_HEAD will be overwritten.


I have no idea whether my man/groff is broken, or your asciidoc program,
or the sources; although, the online copy seems to be ok:
<http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-fetch.html>.

Cheers, and thanks for maintaining git,
Ralf

```