Now that the documentation is mostly consistant in the use of "remote branch" Vs "remote-tracking branch", let's make this distinction explicit early in the user-manual. Signed-off-by: Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@xxxxxxx> --- Documentation/user-manual.txt | 20 +++++++++++++++++--- 1 files changed, 17 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/user-manual.txt b/Documentation/user-manual.txt index d70f3e0..62b3788 100644 --- a/Documentation/user-manual.txt +++ b/Documentation/user-manual.txt @@ -344,7 +344,8 @@ Examining branches from a remote repository The "master" branch that was created at the time you cloned is a copy of the HEAD in the repository that you cloned from. That repository may also have had other branches, though, and your local repository -keeps branches which track each of those remote branches, which you +keeps branches which track each of those remote branches, called +remote-tracking branches, which you can view using the "-r" option to linkgit:git-branch[1]: ------------------------------------------------ @@ -359,6 +360,14 @@ $ git branch -r origin/todo ------------------------------------------------ +In this case, "origin" is called a remote repository, or "remote" for +short. The branches of this repository are called "remote branches" +from our point of view. The remote-tracking branches are created in +the local repository at clone time, as a copy of the remote branches. +They are references that will be updated by "git fetch" (hence by "git +pull"), and by "git push". See +<<Updating-a-repository-With-git-fetch>> for details. + You cannot check out these remote-tracking branches, but you can examine them on a branch of your own, just as you would a tag: @@ -1716,14 +1725,19 @@ one step: $ git pull origin master ------------------------------------------------- -In fact, if you have "master" checked out, then by default "git pull" -merges from the HEAD branch of the origin repository. So often you can +In fact, if you have "master" checked out, then this branch has been +configured by "git clone" to get changes from the HEAD branch of the +origin repository. So often you can accomplish the above with just a simple ------------------------------------------------- $ git pull ------------------------------------------------- +This command will fetch the changes from the remote branches to your +remote-tracking branches `origin/*`, and merge default branch in the +current branch. + More generally, a branch that is created from a remote-tracking branch will pull by default from that branch. See the descriptions of the -- 1.7.3.2.183.g2e7b0 -- 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