Documentation: clarify which parameters are optional to git-cherry

[git.git] / Documentation / git-rev-parse.txt

diff --git a/Documentation/git-rev-parse.txt b/Documentation/git-rev-parse.txt
index 378a3124acdbc96a9efbe06c253f1fd561cf3d7e..2921da320d2b84df4d15ec2745e6d94093dd6907 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/git-rev-parse.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-rev-parse.txt
@@ -155,8 +155,9 @@ blobs contained in a commit.
   name the same commit object if there are no other object in
   your repository whose object name starts with dae86e.
 
-* An output from 'git-describe'; i.e. a closest tag, followed by a
-  dash, a `g`, and an abbreviated object name.
+* An output from 'git-describe'; i.e. a closest tag, optionally
+  followed by a dash and a number of commits, followed by a dash, a
+  `g`, and an abbreviated object name.
 
 * A symbolic ref name.  E.g. 'master' typically means the commit
   object referenced by $GIT_DIR/refs/heads/master.  If you
@@ -166,7 +167,7 @@ blobs contained in a commit.
   first match in the following rules:
 
   . if `$GIT_DIR/<name>` exists, that is what you mean (this is usually
-    useful only for `HEAD`, `FETCH_HEAD` and `MERGE_HEAD`);
+    useful only for `HEAD`, `FETCH_HEAD`, `ORIG_HEAD` and `MERGE_HEAD`);
 
   . otherwise, `$GIT_DIR/refs/<name>` if exists;
 
@@ -177,6 +178,16 @@ blobs contained in a commit.
   . otherwise, `$GIT_DIR/refs/remotes/<name>` if exists;
 
   . otherwise, `$GIT_DIR/refs/remotes/<name>/HEAD` if exists.
++
+HEAD names the commit your changes in the working tree is based on.
+FETCH_HEAD records the branch you fetched from a remote repository
+with your last 'git-fetch' invocation.
+ORIG_HEAD is created by commands that moves your HEAD in a drastic
+way, to record the position of the HEAD before their operation, so that
+you can change the tip of the branch back to the state before you ran
+them easily.
+MERGE_HEAD records the commit(s) you are merging into your branch
+when you run 'git-merge'.
 
 * A ref followed by the suffix '@' with a date specification
   enclosed in a brace
@@ -289,10 +300,10 @@ notation is used.  E.g. "`{caret}r1 r2`" means commits reachable
 from `r2` but exclude the ones reachable from `r1`.
 
 This set operation appears so often that there is a shorthand
-for it.  "`r1..r2`" is equivalent to "`{caret}r1 r2`".  It is
-the difference of two sets (subtract the set of commits
-reachable from `r1` from the set of commits reachable from
-`r2`).
+for it.  When you have two commits `r1` and `r2` (named according
+to the syntax explained in SPECIFYING REVISIONS above), you can ask
+for commits that are reachable from r2 excluding those that are reachable
+from r1 by "`{caret}r1 r2`" and it can be written as "`r1..r2`".
 
 A similar notation "`r1\...r2`" is called symmetric difference
 of `r1` and `r2` and is defined as
@@ -416,7 +427,7 @@ but if $REV is empty, the commit object name from master will be printed.
 Author
 ------
 Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> .
-Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net> and Pierre Habouzit <madcoder@debian.org>
+Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> and Pierre Habouzit <madcoder@debian.org>
 
 Documentation
 --------------