git/Documentation/gitcli.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

175 lines
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gitcli(7)
=========
NAME
----
gitcli - git command line interface and conventions
SYNOPSIS
--------
gitcli
DESCRIPTION
-----------
This manual describes the convention used throughout git CLI.
Many commands take revisions (most often "commits", but sometimes
"tree-ish", depending on the context and command) and paths as their
arguments. Here are the rules:
* Revisions come first and then paths.
E.g. in `git diff v1.0 v2.0 arch/x86 include/asm-x86`,
`v1.0` and `v2.0` are revisions and `arch/x86` and `include/asm-x86`
are paths.
* When an argument can be misunderstood as either a revision or a path,
they can be disambiguated by placing `--` between them.
E.g. `git diff -- HEAD` is, "I have a file called HEAD in my work
tree. Please show changes between the version I staged in the index
and what I have in the work tree for that file". not "show difference
between the HEAD commit and the work tree as a whole". You can say
`git diff HEAD --` to ask for the latter.
* Without disambiguating `--`, git makes a reasonable guess, but errors
out and asking you to disambiguate when ambiguous. E.g. if you have a
file called HEAD in your work tree, `git diff HEAD` is ambiguous, and
you have to say either `git diff HEAD --` or `git diff -- HEAD` to
disambiguate.
When writing a script that is expected to handle random user-input, it is
a good practice to make it explicit which arguments are which by placing
disambiguating `--` at appropriate places.
Here are the rules regarding the "flags" that you should follow when you are
scripting git:
* it's preferred to use the non dashed form of git commands, which means that
you should prefer `git foo` to `git-foo`.
* splitting short options to separate words (prefer `git foo -a -b`
to `git foo -ab`, the latter may not even work).
* when a command line option takes an argument, use the 'sticked' form. In
other words, write `git foo -oArg` instead of `git foo -o Arg` for short
options, and `git foo --long-opt=Arg` instead of `git foo --long-opt Arg`
for long options. An option that takes optional option-argument must be
written in the 'sticked' form.
* when you give a revision parameter to a command, make sure the parameter is
not ambiguous with a name of a file in the work tree. E.g. do not write
`git log -1 HEAD` but write `git log -1 HEAD --`; the former will not work
if you happen to have a file called `HEAD` in the work tree.
ENHANCED OPTION PARSER
----------------------
From the git 1.5.4 series and further, many git commands (not all of them at the
time of the writing though) come with an enhanced option parser.
Here is an exhaustive list of the facilities provided by this option parser.
Magic Options
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Commands which have the enhanced option parser activated all understand a
couple of magic command line options:
-h::
gives a pretty printed usage of the command.
+
---------------------------------------------
$ git describe -h
usage: git describe [options] <committish>*
--contains find the tag that comes after the commit
--debug debug search strategy on stderr
--all use any ref in .git/refs
--tags use any tag in .git/refs/tags
--abbrev [<n>] use <n> digits to display SHA-1s
--candidates <n> consider <n> most recent tags (default: 10)
---------------------------------------------
--help-all::
Some git commands take options that are only used for plumbing or that
are deprecated, and such options are hidden from the default usage. This
option gives the full list of options.
Negating options
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Options with long option names can be negated by prefixing `--no-`. For
example, `git branch` has the option `--track` which is 'on' by default. You
can use `--no-track` to override that behaviour. The same goes for `--color`
and `--no-color`.
Aggregating short options
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Commands that support the enhanced option parser allow you to aggregate short
options. This means that you can for example use `git rm -rf` or
`git clean -fdx`.
Separating argument from the option
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You can write the mandatory option parameter to an option as a separate
word on the command line. That means that all the following uses work:
----------------------------
$ git foo --long-opt=Arg
$ git foo --long-opt Arg
$ git foo -oArg
$ git foo -o Arg
----------------------------
However, this is *NOT* allowed for switches with an optional value, where the
'sticked' form must be used:
----------------------------
$ git describe --abbrev HEAD # correct
$ git describe --abbrev=10 HEAD # correct
$ git describe --abbrev 10 HEAD # NOT WHAT YOU MEANT
----------------------------
NOTES ON FREQUENTLY CONFUSED OPTIONS
------------------------------------
Many commands that can work on files in the working tree
and/or in the index can take `--cached` and/or `--index`
options. Sometimes people incorrectly think that, because
the index was originally called cache, these two are
synonyms. They are *not* -- these two options mean very
different things.
* The `--cached` option is used to ask a command that
usually works on files in the working tree to *only* work
with the index. For example, `git grep`, when used
without a commit to specify from which commit to look for
strings in, usually works on files in the working tree,
but with the `--cached` option, it looks for strings in
the index.
* The `--index` option is used to ask a command that
usually works on files in the working tree to *also*
affect the index. For example, `git stash apply` usually
merges changes recorded in a stash to the working tree,
but with the `--index` option, it also merges changes to
the index as well.
`git apply` command can be used with `--cached` and
`--index` (but not at the same time). Usually the command
only affects the files in the working tree, but with
`--index`, it patches both the files and their index
entries, and with `--cached`, it modifies only the index
entries.
See also http://marc.info/?l=git&m=116563135620359 and
http://marc.info/?l=git&m=119150393620273 for further
information.
GIT
---
Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite