diff --git a/Documentation/git-merge-tree.txt b/Documentation/git-merge-tree.txt
index 58731c19422..569485815a0 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-merge-tree.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-merge-tree.txt

@@ -3,26 +3,73 @@ git-merge-tree(1)
 
 NAME
 ----
-git-merge-tree - Show three-way merge without touching index
+git-merge-tree - Perform merge without touching index or working tree
 
 
 SYNOPSIS
 --------
 [verse]
-'git merge-tree' <base-tree> <branch1> <branch2>
+'git merge-tree' [--write-tree] <branch1> <branch2>
+'git merge-tree' [--trivial-merge] <base-tree> <branch1> <branch2> (deprecated)
 
 DESCRIPTION
 -----------
-Reads three tree-ish, and output trivial merge results and
-conflicting stages to the standard output.  This is similar to
-what three-way 'git read-tree -m' does, but instead of storing the
-results in the index, the command outputs the entries to the
-standard output.
-
-This is meant to be used by higher level scripts to compute
-merge results outside of the index, and stuff the results back into the
-index.  For this reason, the output from the command omits
-entries that match the <branch1> tree.
+
+Performs a merge, but does not make any new commits and does not read
+from or write to either the working tree or index.
+
+The second form is deprecated and supported only for backward
+compatibility.  It will likely be removed in the future, and will not
+be discussed further in this manual.
+
+The first form will merge the two branches, doing a real merge.  A real
+merge is distinguished from a trivial merge in that it includes:
+
+  * three way content merges of individual files
+  * rename detection
+  * proper directory/file conflict handling
+  * recursive ancestor consolidation (i.e. when there is more than one
+    merge base, creating a virtual merge base by merging the merge bases)
+  * etc.
+
+After the merge completes, it will create a new toplevel tree object.
+See `OUTPUT` below for details.
+
+OUTPUT
+------
+
+For either a successful or conflicted merge, the output from
+git-merge-tree is simply one line:
+
+	<OID of toplevel tree>
+
+The printed tree object corresponds to what would be checked out in
+the working tree at the end of `git merge`, and thus may have files
+with conflict markers in them.
+
+EXIT STATUS
+-----------
+
+For a successful, non-conflicted merge, the exit status is 0.  When the
+merge has conflicts, the exit status is 1.  If the merge is not able to
+complete (or start) due to some kind of error, the exit status is
+something other than 0 or 1.
+
+USAGE NOTES
+-----------
+
+git-merge-tree was written to be low-level plumbing, similar to
+hash-object, mktree, commit-tree, update-ref, and mktag.  Thus, it could
+be used as a part of a series of steps such as
+
+       NEWTREE=$(git merge-tree --write-tree $BRANCH1 $BRANCH2)
+       test $? -eq 0 || die "There were conflicts..."
+       NEWCOMMIT=$(git commit-tree $NEWTREE -p $BRANCH1 -p $BRANCH2)
+       git update-ref $BRANCH1 $NEWCOMMIT
+
+However, it does not quite fit into the same category of low-level
+plumbing commands since the possibility of merge conflicts give it a
+much higher chance of the command not succeeding.