Hello all, I'm a physics PhD student, not much experienced in serious software writing, but I've got to the point where I felt learning to use a version control system would be worthwhile. I decided to go for git rather than CVS or Subversion because I felt a distributed VCS would have more potential for future projects. However, I've been experiencing some difficulties with using git, with the results of commands not always being what the tutorial <http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/tutorial.html> says it should be. So, I'm hoping someone here can advise me! I'm using openSUSE 10.0 and the package installed is git-core version 0.99.3git20050905-2. The problem is to do with branches. Wanting to make some trial revisions, I typed, git branch trial to create an appropriate branch. However, typing "git branch" afterwards results in an error message: "git branch: I want a branch name". No list of branches as the tutorial suggests! However, I can use git checkout trial, make edits, and then go back to git checkout master, and switch between the two, with the revisions in one but not in the other. So the branches do seem to exist, and I can modify them separately as one should be able to. Now, having played around with the changes and found that they really work very well, I'd like to merge the changes in the trial branch back into the master. So, as per the tutorial, I type, git pull trial; and am told, "No such remote branch: trial". I've also tried, git pull . trial, which has the result, "No such remote branch: .". I also note that when I'm in the master branch, having used git checkout master, if I go into gitk, it does not show the existence of the trial branch: but if I go into git checkout trial, it does. But the two appear to be shown as completely separate entities. Just as a test, I tried creating a throwaway branch, git branch silly which I then tried to delete with git branch -D silly. However, this didn't delete the silly branch: it created a new one called -D (and both of these *did* show up in gitk under the master branch). Using git-branch instead of git branch results in an error message: "bash: git-branch: command not found". The result is that I'm kind of confused. I'd like to understand why the commands I've tried from the tutorial haven't produced the results the tutorial claims they will; but I'd also like to solve the original problem: how just to merge the stuff in my trial branch back into the master. I suspect this might be simply that the SUSE package has some problems. For example, it doesn't appear to have any man pages included. :-( Thanks for any advice, Best wishes, -- Joe - : send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html