The "master" branch that was created at the time you cloned is a copy
of the HEAD in the repository that you cloned from. That repository
may also have had other branches, though, and your local repository
-keeps branches which track each of those remote branches, which you
+keeps branches which track each of those remote branches, called
+remote-tracking branches, which you
can view using the "-r" option to linkgit:git-branch[1]:
------------------------------------------------
origin/todo
------------------------------------------------
-You cannot check out these remote-tracking branches, but you can
-examine them on a branch of your own, just as you would a tag:
+In this example, "origin" is called a remote repository, or "remote"
+for short. The branches of this repository are called "remote
+branches" from our point of view. The remote-tracking branches listed
+above were created based on the remote branches at clone time and will
+be updated by "git fetch" (hence "git pull") and "git push". See
+<<Updating-a-repository-With-git-fetch>> for details.
+
+You might want to build on one of these remote-tracking branches
+on a branch of your own, just as you would for a tag:
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$ git checkout -b my-todo-copy origin/todo
------------------------------------------------
+You can also check out "origin/todo" directly to examine it or
+write a one-off patch. See <<detached-head,detached head>>.
+
Note that the name "origin" is just the name that git uses by default
to refer to the repository that you cloned from.
$ git pull origin master
-------------------------------------------------
-In fact, if you have "master" checked out, then by default "git pull"
-merges from the HEAD branch of the origin repository. So often you can
+In fact, if you have "master" checked out, then this branch has been
+configured by "git clone" to get changes from the HEAD branch of the
+origin repository. So often you can
accomplish the above with just a simple
-------------------------------------------------
$ git pull
-------------------------------------------------
+This command will fetch changes from the remote branches to your
+remote-tracking branches `origin/*`, and merge the default branch into
+the current branch.
+
More generally, a branch that is created from a remote-tracking branch
will pull
by default from that branch. See the descriptions of the