Subject: Re: [PATCH 04/13] Use "git merge" instead of "git pull ."

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 20:17:40 -0700

Thomas Ackermann <[email-masked]> writes:

> "git pull ." works, but "git merge" is the recommended
> way for new users to do things. (The old description 
> also should have read "The former is actually *not* very
> commonly used".)

I think it is probably a good idea to replace "pull ." in the two
later hunks with "merge", but the flow of the explanation reads
better if you did not touch the first hunk at all.  The section
introduced how fully-spelled "git pull origin master" works, how its
parameters can be omitted in a common case of integrating with the
branch at a remote repository you usually integrate with, and then
the hunk that you touched transitions to the local use, hinting that
your local repository is not all that special.  It is very commonly
used among people who grok that fact, and of course it still works
because we do want to support that usage ;-).

On the other hand, these later two hunks are not about explaining
"pull"; using "git merge" in the examples is more appropriate.

> Signed-off-by: Thomas Ackermann <[email-masked]>
> ---
>  Documentation/user-manual.txt | 15 ++-------------
>  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 13 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/user-manual.txt b/Documentation/user-manual.txt
> index b450980..8a1a441 100644
> --- a/Documentation/user-manual.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/user-manual.txt
> @@ -1784,17 +1784,6 @@ repository that you pulled from.
>  <<fast-forwards,fast-forward>>; instead, your branch will just be
>  updated to point to the latest commit from the upstream branch.)
>  
> -The `git pull` command can also be given `.` as the "remote" repository,
> -in which case it just merges in a branch from the current repository; so
> -the commands
> -
> --------------------------------------------------
> -$ git pull . branch
> -$ git merge branch
> --------------------------------------------------
> -
> -are roughly equivalent.  The former is actually very commonly used.
> -
>  [[submitting-patches]]
>  Submitting patches to a project
>  -------------------------------
> @@ -2259,7 +2248,7 @@ When you are happy with the state of this change, you can pull it into the
>  "test" branch in preparation to make it public:
>  
>  -------------------------------------------------
> -$ git checkout test && git pull . speed-up-spinlocks
> +$ git checkout test && git merge speed-up-spinlocks
>  -------------------------------------------------
>  
>  It is unlikely that you would have any conflicts here ... but you might if you
> @@ -2271,7 +2260,7 @@ see the value of keeping each patch (or patch series) in its own branch.  It
>  means that the patches can be moved into the `release` tree in any order.
>  
>  -------------------------------------------------
> -$ git checkout release && git pull . speed-up-spinlocks
> +$ git checkout release && git merge speed-up-spinlocks
>  -------------------------------------------------
>  
>  After a while, you will have a number of branches, and despite the