When saying the initial branch is equal to the currently active remote branch, it is probably intended that the branch heads point to the same commit. Maybe it would be more useful to a new user to emphasize that the tree contents and history are the same. More important, probably, is that this new branch is set up so that "git pull" merges changes from the corresponding remote branch. The next paragraph addresses that directly. What the reader needs to know to begin with is that (1) the initial branch is your own; if you do not pull, it won't get updated, and that (2) the initial branch starts out at the same commit as the upstream. Thanks to Junio C Hamano for the wording. Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@xxxxxxxxx> --- Junio C Hamano wrote: > Perhaps > > ... creates and checks out an initial branch that is forked from the > cloned repository's currently active branch. > > would convey that (1) the initial branch is your own; if you do not pull, > you won't get updated, and that (2) the initial branch starts out at the > same commit as the upstream. That does work better. Explanation stolen for the commit message --- I hope you don't mind. Thanks, Jonathan Documentation/git-clone.txt | 5 +++-- 1 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/git-clone.txt b/Documentation/git-clone.txt index aacf4fd..5ebcba1 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-clone.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-clone.txt @@ -19,8 +19,9 @@ DESCRIPTION Clones a repository into a newly created directory, creates remote-tracking branches for each branch in the cloned repository -(visible using `git branch -r`), and creates and checks out an initial -branch equal to the cloned repository's currently active branch. +(visible using `git branch -r`), and creates and checks out an +initial branch that is forked from the cloned repository's +currently active branch. After the clone, a plain `git fetch` without arguments will update all the remote-tracking branches, and a `git pull` without -- 1.6.5.rc1.199.g596ec -- To unsubscribe from this list: 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