$ man git-log
------------------------------------------------
+or:
+
+------------------------------------------------
+$ git help log
+------------------------------------------------
+
+With the latter, you can use the manual viewer of your choice; see
+linkgit:git-help[1] for more information.
+
It is a good idea to introduce yourself to git with your name and
public email address before doing any operation. The easiest
way to do so is:
This merges the changes from Bob's "master" branch into Alice's
current branch. If Alice has made her own changes in the meantime,
-then she may need to manually fix any conflicts. (Note that the
-"master" argument in the above command is actually unnecessary, as it
-is the default.)
+then she may need to manually fix any conflicts.
The "pull" command thus performs two operations: it fetches changes
from a remote branch, then merges them into the current branch.
+Note that in general, Alice would want her local changes committed before
+initiating this "pull". If Bob's work conflicts with what Alice did since
+their histories forked, Alice will use her working tree and the index to
+resolve conflicts, and existing local changes will interfere with the
+conflict resolution process (git will still perform the fetch but will
+refuse to merge --- Alice will have to get rid of her local changes in
+some way and pull again when this happens).
+
+Alice can peek at what Bob did without merging first, using the "fetch"
+command; this allows Alice to inspect what Bob did, using a special
+symbol "FETCH_HEAD", in order to determine if he has anything worth
+pulling, like this:
+
+------------------------------------------------
+alice$ git fetch /home/bob/myrepo master
+alice$ git log -p HEAD..FETCH_HEAD
+------------------------------------------------
+
+This operation is safe even if Alice has uncommitted local changes.
+The range notation "HEAD..FETCH_HEAD" means "show everything that is reachable
+from the FETCH_HEAD but exclude anything that is reachable from HEAD".
+Alice already knows everything that leads to her current state (HEAD),
+and reviews what Bob has in his state (FETCH_HEAD) that she has not
+seen with this command.
+
+If Alice wants to visualize what Bob did since their histories forked
+she can issue the following command:
+
+------------------------------------------------
+$ gitk HEAD..FETCH_HEAD
+------------------------------------------------
+
+This uses the same two-dot range notation we saw earlier with 'git log'.
+
+Alice may want to view what both of them did since they forked.
+She can use three-dot form instead of the two-dot form:
+
+------------------------------------------------
+$ gitk HEAD...FETCH_HEAD
+------------------------------------------------
+
+This means "show everything that is reachable from either one, but
+exclude anything that is reachable from both of them".
+
+Please note that these range notation can be used with both gitk
+and "git log".
+
+After inspecting what Bob did, if there is nothing urgent, Alice may
+decide to continue working without pulling from Bob. If Bob's history
+does have something Alice would immediately need, Alice may choose to
+stash her work-in-progress first, do a "pull", and then finally unstash
+her work-in-progress on top of the resulting history.
+
When you are working in a small closely knit group, it is not
unusual to interact with the same repository over and over
again. By defining 'remote' repository shorthand, you can make
alice$ git remote add bob /home/bob/myrepo
------------------------------------------------
-With this, Alice can perform the first operation alone using the
-'git-fetch' command without merging them with her own branch,
-using:
+With this, Alice can perform the first part of the "pull" operation
+alone using the 'git-fetch' command without merging them with her own
+branch, using:
-------------------------------------
alice$ git fetch bob
You can also give 'git-log' a "range" of commits where the first is not
necessarily an ancestor of the second; for example, if the tips of
-the branches "stable-release" and "master" diverged from a common
+the branches "stable" and "master" diverged from a common
commit some time ago, then
-------------------------------------
-$ git log stable..experimental
+$ git log stable..master
-------------------------------------
-will list commits made in the experimental branch but not in the
+will list commits made in the master branch but not in the
stable branch, while
-------------------------------------
-$ git log experimental..stable
+$ git log master..stable
-------------------------------------
will show the list of commits made on the stable branch but not
-the experimental branch.
+the master branch.
The 'git-log' command has a weakness: it must present commits in a
list. When the history has lines of development that diverged and
then merged back together, the order in which 'git-log' presents
those commits is meaningless.
-Most projects with multiple contributors (such as the linux kernel,
+Most projects with multiple contributors (such as the Linux kernel,
or git itself) have frequent merges, and 'gitk' does a better job of
visualizing their history. For example,
* linkgit:git-format-patch[1], linkgit:git-am[1]: These convert
series of git commits into emailed patches, and vice versa,
- useful for projects such as the linux kernel which rely heavily
+ useful for projects such as the Linux kernel which rely heavily
on emailed patches.
* linkgit:git-bisect[1]: When there is a regression in your
smart enough to perform a close-to-optimal search even in the
case of complex non-linear history with lots of merged branches.
+ * linkgit:gitworkflows[7]: Gives an overview of recommended
+ workflows.
+
* link:everyday.html[Everyday GIT with 20 Commands Or So]
* linkgit:gitcvs-migration[7]: Git for CVS users.
linkgit:gitcvs-migration[7],
linkgit:gitcore-tutorial[7],
linkgit:gitglossary[7],
+linkgit:git-help[1],
+linkgit:gitworkflows[7],
link:everyday.html[Everyday git],
link:user-manual.html[The Git User's Manual]