Merge branch 'jl/clone-recurse-sm-synonym'

[git.git] / Documentation / user-manual.txt

diff --git a/Documentation/user-manual.txt b/Documentation/user-manual.txt
index d70f3e04ffec209e1406d75c9051fd12f49b22f1..f13a84613198936ab238e356ec30091db4844544 100644 (file)
--- 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]:
 
 ------------------------------------------------
@@ -359,13 +360,23 @@ $ git branch -r
   origin/todo
 ------------------------------------------------
 
-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:
+In this example, "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 listed
+above were created based on the remote branches at clone time and will
+be updated by "git fetch" (hence "git pull") and "git push". See
+<<Updating-a-repository-With-git-fetch>> for details.
+
+You might want to build on one of these remote-tracking branches
+on a branch of your own, just as you would for a tag:
 
 ------------------------------------------------
 $ git checkout -b my-todo-copy origin/todo
 ------------------------------------------------
 
+You can also check out "origin/todo" directly to examine it or
+write a one-off patch.  See <<detached-head,detached head>>.
+
 Note that the name "origin" is just the name that git uses by default
 to refer to the repository that you cloned from.
 
@@ -1716,14 +1727,19 @@ 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 changes from the remote branches to your
+remote-tracking branches `origin/*`, and merge the default branch into
+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