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Documentation/checkout: clarify description

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To the first-time reader, it may not be obvious that ‘git checkout’
has two modes, nor that if no branch is specified it will read
from the index.

Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
This commit is contained in:
Jonathan Nieder 2010-05-30 03:41:53 -05:00 committed by Junio C Hamano
parent 371276bf29
commit c5b41519c7
1 changed files with 17 additions and 11 deletions
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28
Documentation/git-checkout.txt
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@ -15,26 +15,32 @@ SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
-----------
Retrieves files from the index or specified tree and writes them
to the working tree.
When <paths> are not given, this command switches branches by
updating the index, working tree, and HEAD to reflect the specified
branch.
'git checkout' [-b <new branch>] [<branch>]::
When <paths> are not given, this command switches branches by
updating the index, working tree, and HEAD to reflect the
specified branch.
+
If `-b` is given, a new branch is created and checked out, as if
linkgit:git-branch[1] were called; in this case you can
use the --track or --no-track options, which will be passed to `git
branch`. As a convenience, --track without `-b` implies branch
creation; see the description of --track below.
When <paths> or --patch are given, this command does *not* switch
branches. It updates the named paths in the working tree from
the index file, or from a named <tree-ish> (most often a commit). In
this case, the `-b` and `--track` options are meaningless and giving
either of them results in an error. The <tree-ish> argument can be
used to specify a specific tree-ish (i.e. commit, tag or tree)
to update the index for the given paths before updating the
working tree.
'git checkout' [--patch] [<tree-ish>] [--] [<pathspec>...]::
When <paths> or --patch are given, this command does *not* switch
branches. It updates the named paths in the working tree from
the index file, or from a named <tree-ish> (most often a commit). In
this case, the `-b` and `--track` options are meaningless and giving
either of them results in an error. The <tree-ish> argument can be
used to specify a specific tree-ish (i.e. commit, tag or tree)
to update the index for the given paths before updating the
working tree.
+
The index may contain unmerged entries after a failed merge. By
default, if you try to check out such an entry from the index, the
checkout operation will fail and nothing will be checked out.