From: J. Bruce Fields Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:53:37 +0000 (-0500) Subject: user-manual: define "branch" and "working tree" at start X-Git-Tag: v1.5.3.7~8^2~3 X-Git-Url: https://git.tokkee.org/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=0c4a33b54f3dbb9fa8cd2f5cf0e2a6363849d899;p=git.git user-manual: define "branch" and "working tree" at start Some explanation here might help. Signed-off-by: J. Bruce Fields --- diff --git a/Documentation/user-manual.txt b/Documentation/user-manual.txt index c02735333..8355cce29 100644 --- a/Documentation/user-manual.txt +++ b/Documentation/user-manual.txt @@ -56,11 +56,12 @@ $ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git The initial clone may be time-consuming for a large project, but you will only need to clone once. -The clone command creates a new directory named after the project -("git" or "linux-2.6" in the examples above). After you cd into this +The clone command creates a new directory named after the project ("git" +or "linux-2.6" in the examples above). After you cd into this directory, you will see that it contains a copy of the project files, -together with a special top-level directory named ".git", which -contains all the information about the history of the project. +called the <>, together with a special +top-level directory named ".git", which contains all the information +about the history of the project. [[how-to-check-out]] How to check out a different version of a project @@ -71,8 +72,13 @@ of files. It stores the history as a compressed collection of interrelated snapshots of the project's contents. In git each such version is called a <>. -A single git repository may contain multiple branches. It keeps track -of them by keeping a list of <> which reference the +Those snapshots aren't necessarily all arranged in a single line from +oldest to newest; instead, work may simultaneously proceed along +parallel lines of development, called >, which may +merge and diverge. + +A single git repository can track development on multiple branches. It +does this by keeping a list of <> which reference the latest commit on each branch; the gitlink:git-branch[1] command shows you the list of branch heads: