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-rw-r--r--Documentation/tutorial.txt52
1 files changed, 31 insertions, 21 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/tutorial.txt b/Documentation/tutorial.txt
index 4a29607915..ede48ebc31 100644
--- a/Documentation/tutorial.txt
+++ b/Documentation/tutorial.txt
@@ -472,10 +472,11 @@ A "light" tag is technically nothing more than a branch, except we put
it in the ".git/refs/tags/" subdirectory instead of calling it a "head".
So the simplest form of tag involves nothing more than
- cat .git/HEAD > .git/refs/tags/my-first-tag
+ git tag my-first-tag
-after which point you can use this symbolic name for that particular
-state. You can, for example, do
+which just writes the current HEAD into the .git/refs/tags/my-first-tag
+file, after which point you can then use this symbolic name for that
+particular state. You can, for example, do
git diff my-first-tag
@@ -487,9 +488,9 @@ since you tagged it.
A "signed tag" is actually a real git object, and contains not only a
pointer to the state you want to tag, but also a small tag name and
message, along with a PGP signature that says that yes, you really did
-that tag. You create these signed tags with
+that tag. You create these signed tags with the "-s" flag to "git tag":
- git tag <tagname>
+ git tag -s <tagname>
which will sign the current HEAD (but you can also give it another
argument that specifies the thing to tag, ie you could have tagged the
@@ -620,7 +621,7 @@ repository, and checked it out.
---------------------
Branches in git are really nothing more than pointers into the git
-object space from within the ",git/refs/" subdirectory, and as we
+object space from within the ".git/refs/" subdirectory, and as we
already discussed, the HEAD branch is nothing but a symlink to one of
these object pointers.
@@ -632,36 +633,45 @@ want (and indeed, subdirectories), but the convention is that the
and nothing enforces it.
To show that as an example, let's go back to the git-tutorial archive we
-used earlier, and create a branch in it. You literally do that by just
-creating a new SHA1 reference file, and switch to it by just making the
-HEAD pointer point to it:
+used earlier, and create a branch in it. You do that by simply just
+saying that you want to check out a new branch:
- cat .git/HEAD > .git/refs/heads/mybranch
- ln -sf refs/heads/mybranch .git/HEAD
+ git checkout -b mybranch
-and you're done.
+will create a new branch based at the current HEAD position, and switch
+to it.
-Now, if you make the decision to start your new branch at some other
-point in the history than the current HEAD, you usually also want to
-actually switch the contents of your working directory to that point
-when you switch the head, and "git checkout" will do that for you:
-instead of switching the branch by hand with "ln -sf", you can just do
+[ Side note: if you make the decision to start your new branch at some
+ other point in the history than the current HEAD, you can do so by
+ just telling "git checkout" what the base of the checkout would be.
+ In other words, if you have an earlier tag or branch, you'd just do
- git checkout mybranch
+ git checkout -b mybranch earlier-branch
-which will basically "jump" to the branch specified, update your working
-directory to that state, and also make it become the new default HEAD.
+ and it would create the new branch "mybranch" at the earlier point,
+ and check out the state at that time. ]
You can always just jump back to your original "master" branch by doing
git checkout master
-and if you forget which branch you happen to be on, a simple
+(or any other branch-name, for that matter) and if you forget which
+branch you happen to be on, a simple
ls -l .git/HEAD
will tell you where it's pointing.
+NOTE! Sometimes you may wish to create a new branch _without_ actually
+checking it out and switching to it. If so, just use the command
+
+ git branch <branchname> [startingpoint]
+
+which will simply _create_ the branch, but will not do anything further.
+You can then later - once you decide that you want to actually develop
+on that branch - switch to that branch with a regular "git checkout"
+with the branchname as the argument.
+
Merging two branches
--------------------