index 0ee49d4898c32d9c7321678c2109a87235ad4d84..36fef6ec041cd1d0d31c79a98f23a84e9a8691fd 100644 (file)
--- a/README
+++ b/README
that commit, and you should save it away for later use. Normally,
you'd commit a new `HEAD` state, and while git doesn't care where you
save the note about that state, in practice we tend to just write the
-result to the file `.git/HEAD`, so that we can always see what the
-last committed state was.
+result to the file pointed at by `.git/HEAD`, so that we can always see
+what the last committed state was.
+
+Here is an ASCII art by Jon Loeliger that illustrates how
+various pieces fit together.
+
+------------
+
+ commit-tree
+ commit obj
+ +----+
+ | |
+ | |
+ V V
+ +-----------+
+ | Object DB |
+ | Backing |
+ | Store |
+ +-----------+
+ ^
+ write-tree | |
+ tree obj | |
+ | | read-tree
+ | | tree obj
+ V
+ +-----------+
+ | Index |
+ | "cache" |
+ +-----------+
+ update-index ^
+ blob obj | |
+ | |
+ checkout-index -u | | checkout-index
+ stat | | blob obj
+ V
+ +-----------+
+ | Working |
+ | Directory |
+ +-----------+
+
+------------
+
6) Examining the data
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
follow the convention of having the top commit name in `.git/HEAD`,
you can do
- git-cat-file commit $(cat .git/HEAD)
+ git-cat-file commit HEAD
to see what the top commit was.