git-cherry(1)'s "description" section has never really managed
to explain to me what the command does.  It contains too much
explanation of the algorithm instead of simply saying what
goals it achieves, and too much terminology that we otherwise
do not use (fork-point instead of merge-base).

Try a much more concise approach: state what it finds out, why
this is neat, and how the output is formatted, in a few short
paragraphs.  In return, provide much longer examples of how it
fits into a "format-patch | am" based workflow, and how it
compares to reading the same from git-log.

Also carefully avoid using "merge" in a context where it does
not mean something that comes from git-merge(1).  Instead, say
"apply" in an attempt to further link to patch workflow
concepts.

While there, also omit the language about _which_ upstream
branch we treat as the default.  I literally just learned that
we support having several, so let's not confuse new users
here, especially considering that git-config(1) does not
document this.

Prompted-by: a.huemer@commend.com on #git
Signed-off-by: Thomas Rast <tr@thomasrast.ch>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

The id is already different for binary files.  The hash used is an
implementation detail, so let's just document how diffs are compared.

Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>

The SYNOPSIS sections of most commands that span several lines already
use [verse] to retain line breaks. Most commands that don't span
several lines seem not to use [verse]. In the HTML output, [verse]
does not only preserve line breaks, but also makes the section
indented, which causes a slight inconsistency between commands that
use [verse] and those that don't. Use [verse] in all SYNOPSIS sections
for consistency.

Also remove the blank lines from git-fetch.txt and git-rebase.txt to
align with the other man pages. In the case of git-rebase.txt, which
already uses [verse], the blank line makes the [verse] not apply to
the last line, so removing the blank line also makes the formatting
within the document more consistent.

While at it, add single quotes to 'git cvsimport' for consistency with
other commands.

Signed-off-by: Martin von Zweigbergk <martin.von.zweigbergk@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

The point of these sections is generally to:

  1. Give credit where it is due.

  2. Give the reader an idea of where to ask questions or
     file bug reports.

But they don't do a good job of either case. For (1), they
are out of date and incomplete. A much more accurate answer
can be gotten through shortlog or blame.  For (2), the
correct contact point is generally git@vger, and even if you
wanted to cc the contact point, the out-of-date and
incomplete fields mean you're likely sending to somebody
useless.

So let's drop the fields entirely from all manpages except
git(1) itself. We already point people to the mailing list
for bug reports there, and we can update the Authors section
to give credit to the major contributors and point to
shortlog and blame for more information.

Each page has a "This is part of git" footer, so people can
follow that to the main git manpage.

The documentation was quite inconsistent when spelling 'git cmd' if it
only refers to the program, not to some specific invocation syntax:
both 'git-cmd' and 'git cmd' spellings exist.

The current trend goes towards dashless forms, and there is precedent
in 647ac70 (git-svn.txt: stop using dash-form of commands.,
2009-07-07) to actively eliminate the dashed variants.

Replace 'git-cmd' with 'git cmd' throughout, except where git-shell,
git-cvsserver, git-upload-pack, git-receive-pack, and
git-upload-archive are concerned, because those really live in the
$PATH.

An earlier parameter is only optional when all of the later parameters are
omitted.

Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

The upstream branch <upstream> now defaults to the first tracked
remote branch, which is set by the configuration variables
branch.<name>.remote and branch.<name>.merge of the current branch.

Without such a remote branch, the command "git cherry [-v]" fails with
usage output as before and an additional message.

Signed-off-by: Markus Heidelberg <markus.heidelberg@web.de>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

The old cox.net address is still getting mails from gitters.

Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

The names of git commands are not meant to be entered at the
commandline; they are just names. So we render them in italics,
as is usual for command names in manpages.

Using

	doit () {
	  perl -e 'for (<>) { s/\`(git-[^\`.]*)\`/'\''\1'\''/g; print }'
	}
	for i in git*.txt config.txt diff*.txt blame*.txt fetch*.txt i18n.txt \
	        merge*.txt pretty*.txt pull*.txt rev*.txt urls*.txt
	do
	  doit <"$i" >"$i+" && mv "$i+" "$i"
	done
	git diff

.

Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@uchicago.edu>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

Following what appears to be the predominant style, format
names of commands and commandlines both as `teletype text`.

While we're at it, add articles ("a" and "the") in some
places, italicize the name of the command in the manual page
synopsis line, and add a comma or two where it seems appropriate.

Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@uchicago.edu>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>