git/Documentation/pull-fetch-param.txt
Jeff King 6cf378f0cb docs: stop using asciidoc no-inline-literal
In asciidoc 7, backticks like `foo` produced a typographic
effect, but did not otherwise affect the syntax. In asciidoc
8, backticks introduce an "inline literal" inside which markup
is not interpreted. To keep compatibility with existing
documents, asciidoc 8 has a "no-inline-literal" attribute to
keep the old behavior. We enabled this so that the
documentation could be built on either version.

It has been several years now, and asciidoc 7 is no longer
in wide use. We can now decide whether or not we want
inline literals on their own merits, which are:

  1. The source is much easier to read when the literal
     contains punctuation. You can use `master~1` instead
     of `master{tilde}1`.

  2. They are less error-prone. Because of point (1), we
     tend to make mistakes and forget the extra layer of
     quoting.

This patch removes the no-inline-literal attribute from the
Makefile and converts every use of backticks in the
documentation to an inline literal (they must be cleaned up,
or the example above would literally show "{tilde}" in the
output).

Problematic sites were found by grepping for '`.*[{\\]' and
examined and fixed manually. The results were then verified
by comparing the output of "html2text" on the set of
generated html pages. Doing so revealed that in addition to
making the source more readable, this patch fixes several
formatting bugs:

  - HTML rendering used the ellipsis character instead of
    literal "..." in code examples (like "git log A...B")

  - some code examples used the right-arrow character
    instead of '->' because they failed to quote

  - api-config.txt did not quote tilde, and the resulting
    HTML contained a bogus snippet like:

      <tt><sub></tt> foo <tt></sub>bar</tt>

    which caused some parsers to choke and omit whole
    sections of the page.

  - git-commit.txt confused ``foo`` (backticks inside a
    literal) with ``foo'' (matched double-quotes)

  - mentions of `A U Thor <author@example.com>` used to
    erroneously auto-generate a mailto footnote for
    author@example.com

  - the description of --word-diff=plain incorrectly showed
    the output as "[-removed-] and {added}", not "{+added+}".

  - using "prime" notation like:

      commit `C` and its replacement `C'`

    confused asciidoc into thinking that everything between
    the first backtick and the final apostrophe were meant
    to be inside matched quotes

  - asciidoc got confused by the escaping of some of our
    asterisks. In particular,

      `credential.\*` and `credential.<url>.\*`

    properly escaped the asterisk in the first case, but
    literally passed through the backslash in the second
    case.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
2012-04-26 13:19:06 -07:00

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<repository>::
The "remote" repository that is the source of a fetch
or pull operation. This parameter can be either a URL
(see the section <<URLS,GIT URLS>> below) or the name
of a remote (see the section <<REMOTES,REMOTES>> below).
ifndef::git-pull[]
<group>::
A name referring to a list of repositories as the value
of remotes.<group> in the configuration file.
(See linkgit:git-config[1]).
endif::git-pull[]
<refspec>::
The format of a <refspec> parameter is an optional plus
`+`, followed by the source ref <src>, followed
by a colon `:`, followed by the destination ref <dst>.
+
The remote ref that matches <src>
is fetched, and if <dst> is not empty string, the local
ref that matches it is fast-forwarded using <src>.
If the optional plus `+` is used, the local ref
is updated even if it does not result in a fast-forward
update.
+
[NOTE]
If the remote branch from which you want to pull is
modified in non-linear ways such as being rewound and
rebased frequently, then a pull will attempt a merge with
an older version of itself, likely conflict, and fail.
It is under these conditions that you would want to use
the `+` sign to indicate non-fast-forward updates will
be needed. There is currently no easy way to determine
or declare that a branch will be made available in a
repository with this behavior; the pulling user simply
must know this is the expected usage pattern for a branch.
+
[NOTE]
You never do your own development on branches that appear
on the right hand side of a <refspec> colon on `Pull:` lines;
they are to be updated by 'git fetch'. If you intend to do
development derived from a remote branch `B`, have a `Pull:`
line to track it (i.e. `Pull: B:remote-B`), and have a separate
branch `my-B` to do your development on top of it. The latter
is created by `git branch my-B remote-B` (or its equivalent `git
checkout -b my-B remote-B`). Run `git fetch` to keep track of
the progress of the remote side, and when you see something new
on the remote branch, merge it into your development branch with
`git pull . remote-B`, while you are on `my-B` branch.
+
[NOTE]
There is a difference between listing multiple <refspec>
directly on 'git pull' command line and having multiple
`Pull:` <refspec> lines for a <repository> and running
'git pull' command without any explicit <refspec> parameters.
<refspec> listed explicitly on the command line are always
merged into the current branch after fetching. In other words,
if you list more than one remote refs, you would be making
an Octopus. While 'git pull' run without any explicit <refspec>
parameter takes default <refspec>s from `Pull:` lines, it
merges only the first <refspec> found into the current branch,
after fetching all the remote refs. This is because making an
Octopus from remote refs is rarely done, while keeping track
of multiple remote heads in one-go by fetching more than one
is often useful.
+
Some short-cut notations are also supported.
+
* `tag <tag>` means the same as `refs/tags/<tag>:refs/tags/<tag>`;
it requests fetching everything up to the given tag.
* A parameter <ref> without a colon is equivalent to
<ref>: when pulling/fetching, so it merges <ref> into the current
branch without storing the remote branch anywhere locally