Re: Cleaning up git user-interface warts

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Linus Torvalds wrote:

I'm saying that even if you _never_ end up using "git fetch" ever again 
(because in practice you always want to do a "fetch + merge == pull"), 
people who teach others the concepts and usage of git should probably 
start by talking about "git fetch".

Then, when the user says (and he obviously will say this) "but I don't 
want to just fetch the other persons work into some local branch, I want 
to actually get it into _my_ branch", you say "Ahhah!" and talk about how 
"pull" is a shorthand for first fetching and then merging the result into 
the current branch.

Actually I believe it would make things even clearer if "merge" was 
taught at that point.  Only when the user is comfortable with the 
separate notions of fetching and merging might the pull shorthand 
possibly be mentioned.