Attempt to clarify somewhat the difference between pull and merge, and give a little more details on the pull syntax. I'm still not happy with this section: the explanation of the origin branch isn't great, but maybe that should be left alone pending the use-separate-remotes change; and we need to explain how to set up a public repository and push to it. Signed-off-by: J. Bruce Fields <bfields@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/tutorial.txt | 41 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------- 1 files changed, 26 insertions(+), 15 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/tutorial.txt b/Documentation/tutorial.txt index 1e4ddfb..35af81a 100644 --- a/Documentation/tutorial.txt +++ b/Documentation/tutorial.txt @@ -209,29 +209,28 @@ at /home/bob/myrepo. She does this with ------------------------------------------------ $ cd /home/alice/project -$ git pull /home/bob/myrepo +$ git pull /home/bob/myrepo master ------------------------------------------------ -This actually pulls changes from the branch in Bob's repository named -"master". Alice could request a different branch by adding the name -of the branch to the end of the git pull command line. +This merges the changes from Bob's "master" branch into Alice's +current branch. If Alice has made her own changes in the meantime, +then she may need to manually fix any conflicts. (Note that the +"master" argument in the above command is actually unnecessary, as it +is the default.) -This merges Bob's changes into her repository; "git log" will -now show the new commits. If Alice has made her own changes in the -meantime, then Bob's changes will be merged in, and she will need to -manually fix any conflicts. +The "pull" command thus performs two operations: it fetches changes +from a remote branch, then merges them into the current branch. -A more cautious Alice might wish to examine Bob's changes before -pulling them. She can do this by creating a temporary branch just -for the purpose of studying Bob's changes: +You can perform the first operation alone using the "git fetch" +command. For example, Alice could create a temporary branch just to +track Bob's changes, without merging them with her own, using: ------------------------------------- $ git fetch /home/bob/myrepo master:bob-incoming ------------------------------------- which fetches the changes from Bob's master branch into a new branch -named bob-incoming. (Unlike git pull, git fetch just fetches a copy -of Bob's line of development without doing any merging). Then +named bob-incoming. Then ------------------------------------- $ git log -p master..bob-incoming @@ -240,8 +239,8 @@ $ git log -p master..bob-incoming shows a list of all the changes that Bob made since he branched from Alice's master branch. -After examining those changes, and possibly fixing things, Alice can -pull the changes into her master branch: +After examining those changes, and possibly fixing things, Alice +could pull the changes into her master branch: ------------------------------------- $ git checkout master @@ -251,6 +250,18 @@ $ git pull . bob-incoming The last command is a pull from the "bob-incoming" branch in Alice's own repository. +Alice could also perform both steps at once with: + +------------------------------------- +$ git pull /home/bob/myrepo master:bob-incoming +------------------------------------- + +This is just like the "git pull /home/bob/myrepo master" that we saw +before, except that it also stores the unmerged changes from bob's +master branch in bob-incoming before merging them into Alice's +current branch. Note that git pull always merges into the current +branch, regardless of what else is given on the commandline. + Later, Bob can update his repo with Alice's latest changes using ------------------------------------- -- 1.4.4.rc1.g83ee9 - 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