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 <redacted>
---
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