fetch doc: update introductory part for clarity
- "Branches" is a more common way to say "heads" in these days. - Remote-tracking branches are used a lot more these days and it is worth mentioning that it is one of the primary side effects of the command to update them. - Avoid "X. That means Y." If Y is easier to understand to readers, just say that upfront. - Use of explicit refspec to fetch tags does not have much to do with turning "auto following" on or off. It is a way to fetch tags that otherwise would not be fetched by auto-following. Helped-by: Marc Branchaud <marcnarc@xiplink.com> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Junio C Hamano committed
May 29, 2014 at 12:36 UTC
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Documentation/git-fetch.txt
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@@ -17,20 +17,22 @@ SYNOPSIS
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DESCRIPTION
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-----------
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-Fetches named heads or tags from one or more other repositories,
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-along with the objects necessary to complete them.
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+Fetch branches and/or tags (collectively, "refs") from one or more
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+other repositories, along with the objects necessary to complete
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+their histories.
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-The ref names and their object names of fetched refs are stored
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-in `.git/FETCH_HEAD`. This information is left for a later merge
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-operation done by 'git merge'.
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+The names of refs that are fetched, together with the object names
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+they point at, are written to `.git/FETCH_HEAD`. This information
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+can be used to learn what was fetched. In addition, the remote-tracking
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+branches are updated (see description on <refspec> below for details).
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-By default, tags are auto-followed. This means that when fetching
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-from a remote, any tags on the remote that point to objects that exist
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-in the local repository are fetched. The effect is to fetch tags that
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+By default, any tag that points into the histories being fetched is
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+also fetched; the effect is to fetch tags that
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point at branches that you are interested in. This default behavior
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-can be changed by using the --tags or --no-tags options, by
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-configuring remote.<name>.tagopt, or by using a refspec that fetches
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-tags explicitly.
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+can be changed by using the --tags or --no-tags options or by
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+configuring remote.<name>.tagopt. By using a refspec that fetches tags
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+explicitly, you can fetch tags that do not point into branches you
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+are interested in as well.
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'git fetch' can fetch from either a single named repository,
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or from several repositories at once if <group> is given and