gitglossary(category10-web-server.html) - phpMan

GITGLOSSARY(7)                    Git Manual                    GITGLOSSARY(7)

NAME
       gitglossary - A Git Glossary
SYNOPSIS
       *
DESCRIPTION
       alternate object database
           Via the alternates mechanism, a repository can inherit part of its
           object database from another object database, which is called
           "alternate".
       bare repository
           A bare repository is normally an appropriately named directory with
           a .git suffix that does not have a locally checked-out copy of any
           of the files under revision control. That is, all of the Git
           administrative and control files that would normally be present in
           the hidden .git sub-directory are directly present in the
           repository.git directory instead, and no other files are present
           and checked out. Usually publishers of public repositories make
           bare repositories available.
       blob object
           Untyped object, e.g. the contents of a file.
       branch
           A "branch" is an active line of development. The most recent commit
           on a branch is referred to as the tip of that branch. The tip of
           the branch is referenced by a branch head, which moves forward as
           additional development is done on the branch. A single Git
           repository can track an arbitrary number of branches, but your
           working tree is associated with just one of them (the "current" or
           "checked out" branch), and HEAD points to that branch.
       cache
           Obsolete for: index.
       chain
           A list of objects, where each object in the list contains a
           reference to its successor (for example, the successor of a commit
           could be one of its parents).
       changeset
           BitKeeper/cvsps speak for "commit". Since Git does not store
           changes, but states, it really does not make sense to use the term
           "changesets" with Git.
       checkout
           The action of updating all or part of the working tree with a tree
           object or blob from the object database, and updating the index and
           HEAD if the whole working tree has been pointed at a new branch.
       cherry-picking
           In SCM jargon, "cherry pick" means to choose a subset of changes
           out of a series of changes (typically commits) and record them as a
           new series of changes on top of a different codebase. In Git, this
           is performed by the "git cherry-pick" command to extract the change
           introduced by an existing commit and to record it based on the tip
           of the current branch as a new commit.
       clean
           A working tree is clean, if it corresponds to the revision
           referenced by the current head. Also see "dirty".
       commit
           As a noun: A single point in the Git history; the entire history of
           a project is represented as a set of interrelated commits. The word
           "commit" is often used by Git in the same places other revision
           control systems use the words "revision" or "version". Also used as
           a short hand for commit object.
           As a verb: The action of storing a new snapshot of the project's
           state in the Git history, by creating a new commit representing the
           current state of the index and advancing HEAD to point at the new
           commit.
       commit object
           An object which contains the information about a particular
           revision, such as parents, committer, author, date and the tree
           object which corresponds to the top directory of the stored
           revision.
       core Git
           Fundamental data structures and utilities of Git. Exposes only
           limited source code management tools.
       DAG
           Directed acyclic graph. The commit objects form a directed acyclic
           graph, because they have parents (directed), and the graph of
           commit objects is acyclic (there is no chain which begins and ends
           with the same object).
       dangling object
           An unreachable object which is not reachable even from other
           unreachable objects; a dangling object has no references to it from
           any reference or object in the repository.
       detached HEAD
           Normally the HEAD stores the name of a branch, and commands that
           operate on the history HEAD represents operate on the history
           leading to the tip of the branch the HEAD points at. However, Git
           also allows you to check out an arbitrary commit that isn't
           necessarily the tip of any particular branch. The HEAD in such a
           state is called "detached".
           Note that commands that operate on the history of the current
           branch (e.g.  git commit to build a new history on top of it) still
           work while the HEAD is detached. They update the HEAD to point at
           the tip of the updated history without affecting any branch.
           Commands that update or inquire information about the current
           branch (e.g.  git branch --set-upstream-to that sets what remote
           tracking branch the current branch integrates with) obviously do
           not work, as there is no (real) current branch to ask about in this
           state.
       directory
           The list you get with "ls" :-)
       dirty
           A working tree is said to be "dirty" if it contains modifications
           which have not been committed to the current branch.
       evil merge
           An evil merge is a merge that introduces changes that do not appear
           in any parent.
       fast-forward
           A fast-forward is a special type of merge where you have a revision
           and you are "merging" another branch's changes that happen to be a
           descendant of what you have. In such these cases, you do not make a
           new mergecommit but instead just update to his revision. This will
           happen frequently on a remote-tracking branch of a remote
           repository.
       fetch
           Fetching a branch means to get the branch's head ref from a remote
           repository, to find out which objects are missing from the local
           object database, and to get them, too. See also git-fetch(1).
       file system
           Linus Torvalds originally designed Git to be a user space file
           system, i.e. the infrastructure to hold files and directories. That
           ensured the efficiency and speed of Git.
       Git archive
           Synonym for repository (for arch people).
       gitfile
           A plain file .git at the root of a working tree that points at the
           directory that is the real repository.
       grafts
           Grafts enables two otherwise different lines of development to be
           joined together by recording fake ancestry information for commits.
           This way you can make Git pretend the set of parents a commit has
           is different from what was recorded when the commit was created.
           Configured via the .git/info/grafts file.
       hash
           In Git's context, synonym for object name.
       head
           A named reference to the commit at the tip of a branch. Heads are
           stored in a file in $GIT_DIR/refs/heads/ directory, except when
           using packed refs. (See git-pack-refs(1).)
       HEAD
           The current branch. In more detail: Your working tree is normally
           derived from the state of the tree referred to by HEAD. HEAD is a
           reference to one of the heads in your repository, except when using
           a detached HEAD, in which case it directly references an arbitrary
           commit.
       head ref
           A synonym for head.
       hook
           During the normal execution of several Git commands, call-outs are
           made to optional scripts that allow a developer to add
           functionality or checking. Typically, the hooks allow for a command
           to be pre-verified and potentially aborted, and allow for a
           post-notification after the operation is done. The hook scripts are
           found in the $GIT_DIR/hooks/ directory, and are enabled by simply
           removing the .sample suffix from the filename. In earlier versions
           of Git you had to make them executable.
       index
           A collection of files with stat information, whose contents are
           stored as objects. The index is a stored version of your working
           tree. Truth be told, it can also contain a second, and even a third
           version of a working tree, which are used when merging.
       index entry
           The information regarding a particular file, stored in the index.
           An index entry can be unmerged, if a merge was started, but not yet
           finished (i.e. if the index contains multiple versions of that
           file).
       master
           The default development branch. Whenever you create a Git
           repository, a branch named "master" is created, and becomes the
           active branch. In most cases, this contains the local development,
           though that is purely by convention and is not required.
       merge
           As a verb: To bring the contents of another branch (possibly from
           an external repository) into the current branch. In the case where
           the merged-in branch is from a different repository, this is done
           by first fetching the remote branch and then merging the result
           into the current branch. This combination of fetch and merge
           operations is called a pull. Merging is performed by an automatic
           process that identifies changes made since the branches diverged,
           and then applies all those changes together. In cases where changes
           conflict, manual intervention may be required to complete the
           merge.
           As a noun: unless it is a fast-forward, a successful merge results
           in the creation of a new commit representing the result of the
           merge, and having as parents the tips of the merged branches. This
           commit is referred to as a "merge commit", or sometimes just a
           "merge".
       object
           The unit of storage in Git. It is uniquely identified by the SHA-1
           of its contents. Consequently, an object can not be changed.
       object database
           Stores a set of "objects", and an individual object is identified
           by its object name. The objects usually live in $GIT_DIR/objects/.
       object identifier
           Synonym for object name.
       object name
           The unique identifier of an object. The object name is usually
           represented by a 40 character hexadecimal string. Also colloquially
           called SHA-1.
       object type
           One of the identifiers "commit", "tree", "tag" or "blob" describing
           the type of an object.
       octopus
           To merge more than two branches.
       origin
           The default upstream repository. Most projects have at least one
           upstream project which they track. By default origin is used for
           that purpose. New upstream updates will be fetched into remote
           remote-tracking branches named origin/name-of-upstream-branch,
           which you can see using git branch -r.
       pack
           A set of objects which have been compressed into one file (to save
           space or to transmit them efficiently).
       pack index
           The list of identifiers, and other information, of the objects in a
           pack, to assist in efficiently accessing the contents of a pack.
       pathspec
           Pattern used to limit paths in Git commands.
           Pathspecs are used on the command line of "git ls-files", "git
           ls-tree", "git add", "git grep", "git diff", "git checkout", and
           many other commands to limit the scope of operations to some subset
           of the tree or worktree. See the documentation of each command for
           whether paths are relative to the current directory or toplevel.
           The pathspec syntax is as follows:
           o   any path matches itself
           o   the pathspec up to the last slash represents a directory
               prefix. The scope of that pathspec is limited to that subtree.
           o   the rest of the pathspec is a pattern for the remainder of the
               pathname. Paths relative to the directory prefix will be
               matched against that pattern using fnmatch(3); in particular, *
               and ?can match directory separators.
           For example, Documentation/*.jpg will match all .jpg files in the
           Documentation subtree, including
           Documentation/chapter_1/figure_1.jpg.
           A pathspec that begins with a colon : has special meaning. In the
           short form, the leading colon : is followed by zero or more "magic
           signature" letters (which optionally is terminated by another colon
           :), and the remainder is the pattern to match against the path. The
           optional colon that terminates the "magic signature" can be omitted
           if the pattern begins with a character that cannot be a "magic
           signature" and is not a colon.
           In the long form, the leading colon : is followed by a open
           parenthesis (, a comma-separated list of zero or more "magic
           words", and a close parentheses ), and the remainder is the pattern
           to match against the path.
           The "magic signature" consists of an ASCII symbol that is not
           alphanumeric. Currently only the slash / is recognized as a "magic
           signature": it makes the pattern match from the root of the working
           tree, even when you are running the command from inside a
           subdirectory.
           A pathspec with only a colon means "there is no pathspec". This
           form should not be combined with other pathspec.
       parent
           A commit object contains a (possibly empty) list of the logical
           predecessor(s) in the line of development, i.e. its parents.
       pickaxe
           The term pickaxe refers to an option to the diffcore routines that
           help select changes that add or delete a given text string. With
           the --pickaxe-all option, it can be used to view the full changeset
           that introduced or removed, say, a particular line of text. See
           git-diff(1).
       plumbing
           Cute name for core Git.
       porcelain
           Cute name for programs and program suites depending on core Git,
           presenting a high level access to core Git. Porcelains expose more
           of a SCM interface than the plumbing.
       pull
           Pulling a branch means to fetch it and merge it. See also git-
           pull(1).
       push
           Pushing a branch means to get the branch's head ref from a remote
           repository, find out if it is a direct ancestor to the branch's
           local head ref, and in that case, putting all objects, which are
           reachable from the local head ref, and which are missing from the
           remote repository, into the remote object database, and updating
           the remote head ref. If the remote head is not an ancestor to the
           local head, the push fails.
       reachable
           All of the ancestors of a given commit are said to be "reachable"
           from that commit. More generally, one object is reachable from
           another if we can reach the one from the other by a chain that
           follows tags to whatever they tag, commits to their parents or
           trees, and trees to the trees or blobs that they contain.
       rebase
           To reapply a series of changes from a branch to a different base,
           and reset the head of that branch to the result.
       ref
           A 40-byte hex representation of a SHA-1 or a name that denotes a
           particular object. They may be stored in a file under
           $GIT_DIR/refs/ directory, or in the $GIT_DIR/packed-refs file.
       reflog
           A reflog shows the local "history" of a ref. In other words, it can
           tell you what the 3rd last revision in this repository was, and
           what was the current state in this repository, yesterday 9:14pm.
           See git-reflog(1) for details.
       refspec
           A "refspec" is used by fetch and push to describe the mapping
           between remote ref and local ref.
       remote-tracking branch
           A regular Git branch that is used to follow changes from another
           repository. A remote-tracking branch should not contain direct
           modifications or have local commits made to it. A remote-tracking
           branch can usually be identified as the right-hand-side ref in a
           Pull: refspec.
       repository
           A collection of refs together with an object database containing
           all objects which are reachable from the refs, possibly accompanied
           by meta data from one or more porcelains. A repository can share an
           object database with other repositories via alternates mechanism.
       resolve
           The action of fixing up manually what a failed automatic merge left
           behind.
       revision
           Synonym for commit (the noun).
       rewind
           To throw away part of the development, i.e. to assign the head to
           an earlier revision.
       SCM
           Source code management (tool).
       SHA-1
           "Secure Hash Algorithm 1"; a cryptographic hash function. In the
           context of Git used as a synonym for object name.
       shallow repository
           A shallow repository has an incomplete history some of whose
           commits have parents cauterized away (in other words, Git is told
           to pretend that these commits do not have the parents, even though
           they are recorded in the commit object). This is sometimes useful
           when you are interested only in the recent history of a project
           even though the real history recorded in the upstream is much
           larger. A shallow repository is created by giving the --depth
           option to git-clone(1), and its history can be later deepened with
           git-fetch(1).
       symref
           Symbolic reference: instead of containing the SHA-1 id itself, it
           is of the format ref: refs/some/thing and when referenced, it
           recursively dereferences to this reference.  HEAD is a prime
           example of a symref. Symbolic references are manipulated with the
           git-symbolic-ref(1) command.
       tag
           A ref under refs/tags/ namespace that points to an object of an
           arbitrary type (typically a tag points to either a tag or a commit
           object). In contrast to a head, a tag is not updated by the commit
           command. A Git tag has nothing to do with a Lisp tag (which would
           be called an object type in Git's context). A tag is most typically
           used to mark a particular point in the commit ancestry chain.
       tag object
           An object containing a ref pointing to another object, which can
           contain a message just like a commit object. It can also contain a
           (PGP) signature, in which case it is called a "signed tag object".
       topic branch
           A regular Git branch that is used by a developer to identify a
           conceptual line of development. Since branches are very easy and
           inexpensive, it is often desirable to have several small branches
           that each contain very well defined concepts or small incremental
           yet related changes.
       tree
           Either a working tree, or a tree object together with the dependent
           blob and tree objects (i.e. a stored representation of a working
           tree).
       tree object
           An object containing a list of file names and modes along with refs
           to the associated blob and/or tree objects. A tree is equivalent to
           a directory.
       tree-ish
           A ref pointing to either a commit object, a tree object, or a tag
           object pointing to a tag or commit or tree object.
       unmerged index
           An index which contains unmerged index entries.
       unreachable object
           An object which is not reachable from a branch, tag, or any other
           reference.
       upstream branch
           The default branch that is merged into the branch in question (or
           the branch in question is rebased onto). It is configured via
           branch.<name>.remote and branch.<name>.merge. If the upstream
           branch of A is origin/B sometimes we say "A is tracking origin/B".
       working tree
           The tree of actual checked out files. The working tree normally
           contains the contents of the HEAD commit's tree, plus any local
           changes that you have made but not yet committed.
SEE ALSO
       gittutorial(7), gittutorial-2(7), gitcvs-migration(7), Everyday Git[1],
       The Git User's Manual[2]
GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite.
NOTES
        1. Everyday Git
           file:///usr/share/doc/git-1.8.3.1/everyday.html
        2. The Git User's Manual
           file:///usr/share/doc/git-1.8.3.1/user-manual.html

Git 1.8.3.1                       07/30/2024                    GITGLOSSARY(7)