The reader unfamiliar with the concepts of branching and merging
would have been completely lost. Try to help him with a diagram.
The diagram comes from the 'git rebase' manual page.
Cc: Petr Baudis <redacted>
Cc: Junio C Hamano <redacted>
Cc: Thomas Rast <redacted>,
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <redacted>
---
Does this tell enough of the story?
Documentation/git-merge.txt | 27 +++++++++++++++++++++++++--
1 files changed, 25 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/git-merge.txt b/Documentation/git-merge.txt
index 394ad0a..fe190e2 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-merge.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-merge.txt
@@ -14,8 +14,31 @@ SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
-----------
-This is the top-level interface to the merge machinery
-which drives multiple merge strategy scripts.
+Incorporates changes leading up to the named commits into the
+current branch. This command is used by 'git pull' to incorporate
+remote changes from another repository and may be used by hand to
+merge changes from one branch into another.
+
+Assume the following history exists and the current branch is
+"`master`":
+
+------------
+ A---B---C topic
+ /
+ D---E---F---G master
+------------
+
+Then "`git merge topic`" will apply the changes from `A`, `B`,
+and `C` to the work tree, and if they do not conflict with any
+changes from `master`, will store the result in a new commit along
+with the names of the two parent commits and a log message from the
+user describing the changes.
+
+------------
+ A---B---C topic
+ / \
+ D---E---F---G---H master
+------------
The second syntax (<msg> `HEAD` <remote>) is supported for
historical reasons. Do not use it from the command line or in
--
1.6.6