Justify 'git commit -a' by comparing it to 'git add <files>'

[hgbook-git] / tour.mdwn

diff --git a/tour.mdwn b/tour.mdwn
index c511fab051c9e5d75d23316a5835dc749cfbcce9..19b00613c3850b505220dd68845eba46fe0bef46 100644 (file)
--- a/tour.mdwn
+++ b/tour.mdwn
@@ -146,13 +146,18 @@ a directory tree in your filesystem that git treats as
 special. You can rename or delete a repository any time you like,
 using either the command line or your file browser.
 
-#### 2.3.1  Making a local copy of a repository
+#### 2.3.1  Creating a local copy of a remote repository
 
-Copying a repository is just a little bit special. While you could use
-a normal file copying command to make a copy of a repository, it’s
-best to use a built-in command that git provides. This command
-is called “git clone”, because it creates an identical copy of an
-existing repository.
+As suggested, a repository can be copied through normal file-copying
+commands. But git also provides a "git clone" tool for copying a
+repository. This provides a means of copying a repository over the
+network, and is also useful with a local repository since it is much
+more efficient than creating a normal copy, (creating a local clones
+is blazingly fast).
+
+We've assembled a simple repository that will be used in the examples
+throughout this chapter. Go ahead and clone this repository now so
+that you will be able to follow along:
 
        $ git clone git://cworth.org/git/hello
        Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/hello/.git/
@@ -339,7 +344,7 @@ in the current branch, "HEAD~", refers to the previous commit, and
 
 Another useful syntax is .. which can be used to specify a range of
 commits. So "origin..master" specifies everything that has been
-committed to master since it derived from origin.
+committed to master since it diverged from origin.
 
 #### 2.4.3  Viewing specific revisions
 
@@ -719,12 +724,18 @@ after we’ve finished committing.
 
        $ git commit -a
 
-Note: The -a on the command-line instructs git to commit all changes
-to tracked files. Without this, "git commit" will only commit changes
-that have been previously staged for committing with "git add
-file". The most common usage is to commit with "git commit -a" and
-only use "git add file; git commit" when there is a need to commit
-only some subset of changes that have been made.
+Note: The -a on the command-line instructs git to commit the new
+content of *all* tracked files that have been modified. This is a
+convenience over explicitly listing filenames to be committed on the
+"git commit" command line. It is useful to use "git commit <files>"
+when there is a need to commit only some subset of the files that have
+been modified.
+
+If new files need to be committed for the first time, just use "git
+add <file>" before "git commit -a". If a file needs to be removed,
+just remove it as normal before committing and "git commit -a" will
+notice that---it does not need to be explicitly told about the
+removal.
 
 The editor that the “git commit” command drops us into will contain an
 empty line, followed by a number of lines starting with “#”.