Re: fetch and pull

Björn Steinbrink [off-list ref] writes:

1) You do "git pull git://host/repo.git" or similar, i.e. you don't use
a remote. Because then, no refspec is given to fetch, and it defaults to
fetching HEAD.
...
1) probably isn't that common for most users, and even if, it's not
one of the commands given as examples to which the paragraph applies.

I think "a maintainer responds to a pull request" is the only case that
happens often in practice for a fetch+merge of HEAD from a remote
repository.

Even in that case, we strongly encourage people to say not just "which
repository location" but also "which branch", i.e.

	Linus, please pull from:

		git://git.or.cz/alt-git.git for-linus

	to obtain the following commits.

When Linus cuts and pastes that to his shell, the command will become:

	$ git pull git://git.or.cz/alt-git.git for-linus

and HEAD is not involved in such a use case.