Re: Obscure error/warning/information message from git pull

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Sergey Organov <address@hidden>
> Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 20:58:15 +0300
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> >> From: Sergey Organov <address@hidden>
> >> Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 19:59:51 +0300
> >> 
> >> My point is that once you send "branch" to a Git command
> >
> > You don't send a branch to Git commands, you send the branch's
> > _label_, or _name_. Let's distinguish between the thing and its name,
> > okay?
> 
> Yes, you send a _name_. It does not represent "branch" the "active line
> of development" though. It just points to particular commit.

So a branch's name can serve more than one duty, so what?

> >> Git itself has no "branches" that are "active lines of development"
> >> in its data model.
> >
> > Git might not have it, but we its users do.
> 
> You are welcome to have them. In your mind. This won't help you to
> understand Git better.

It's orthogonal to understanding Git.

> It's the latter that I've tried to help to achieve. Sorry if I
> failed.

You cannot help people understand new tools if you start by telling
them to forget everything they've learned.  You should instead build
on what they know, or think they know, gradually replacing that with
new knowledge.

Regardless, the concept of "branch" as a separate line of development
is not killed by Git.  It's just that a branch can be named by its
tip, and vice versa.

> My point is that branch name doesn't represent anything else but
> particular reference to particular commit in Git.

No, it also represents all the previous commits made on that branch
that are reachable through first-parents.

> >> Please notice no "branch" in the description of the "--source"
> >
> > I'd suggest not to treat Git docs as a kind of "holy scripture" whose
> > exact wording has any magic meaning beyond what meets the eye. Don't
> > look for some deep meaning in the words used there, because more often
> > than not there isn't any.
> 
> The description in the docs is very exact. Sorry you don't see it, that
> means I'm not very good at explaining it indeed.

It's not your fault.  It's the fault of those who wrote that.

Sometimes being "exact" means being useless.