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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 an
           "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 a 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 graph concept, representations and usage
           A synonym for the DAG structure formed by the commits in the object
           database, referenced by branch tips, using their chain of linked
           commits. This structure is the definitive commit graph. The graph
           can be represented in other ways, e.g. the "commit-graph" file.

       commit-graph file
           The "commit-graph" (normally hyphenated) file is a supplemental
           representation of the commit graph which accelerates commit graph
           walks. The "commit-graph" file is stored either in the
           .git/objects/info directory or in the info directory of an
           alternate object database.

       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.

       commit-ish (also committish)
           A commit object or an object that can be recursively dereferenced
           to a commit object. The following are all commit-ishes: a commit
           object, a tag object that points to a commit object, a tag object
           that points to a tag object that points to a commit object, etc.

       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.

       dereference
           Referring to a symbolic ref: the action of accessing the reference
           pointed at by a symbolic ref. Recursive dereferencing involves
           repeating the aforementioned process on the resulting ref until a
           non-symbolic reference is found.

           Referring to a tag object: the action of accessing the object a tag
           points at. Tags are recursively dereferenced by repeating the
           operation on the result object until the result has either a
           specified object type (where applicable) or any non-"tag" object
           type. A synonym for "recursive dereference" in the context of tags
           is "peel".

           Referring to a commit object: the action of accessing the commit's
           tree object. Commits cannot be dereferenced recursively.

           Unless otherwise specified, "dereferencing" as it used in the
           context of Git commands or protocols is implicitly recursive.

       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 a case, you do not make a new
           merge commit but instead just update your branch to point at the
           same revision as the branch you are merging. 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. For proper use see git-
       worktree(1) or git-submodule(1). For syntax see gitrepository-
       layout(5).

       grafts
           Grafts enable 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.

           Note that the grafts mechanism is outdated and can lead to problems
           transferring objects between repositories; see git-replace(1) for a
           more flexible and robust system to do the same thing.

       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 cannot 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 (oid)
           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.

       orphan
           The act of getting on a branch that does not exist yet (i.e., an
           unborn branch). After such an operation, the commit first created
           becomes a commit without a parent, starting a new history.

       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-tracking branches named origin/name-of-upstream-branch,
           which you can see using git branch -r.

       overlay
           Only update and add files to the working directory, but don't
           delete them, similar to how cp -R would update the contents in the
           destination directory. This is the default mode in a checkout when
           checking out files from the index or a tree-ish. In contrast,
           no-overlay mode also deletes tracked files not present in the
           source, similar to rsync --delete.

       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 working tree. 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
           "magic signature" consists of ASCII symbols that are neither
           alphanumeric, glob, regex special characters nor colon. The
           optional colon that terminates the "magic signature" can be omitted
           if the pattern begins with a character that does not belong to
           "magic signature" symbol set and is not a colon.

           In the long form, the leading colon : is followed by an 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.

           A pathspec with only a colon means "there is no pathspec". This
           form should not be combined with other pathspec.

           top
               The magic word top (magic signature: /) makes the pattern match
               from the root of the working tree, even when you are running
               the command from inside a subdirectory.

           literal
               Wildcards in the pattern such as * or ? are treated as literal
               characters.

           icase
               Case insensitive match.

           glob
               Git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable for consumption
               by fnmatch(3) with the FNM_PATHNAME flag: wildcards in the
               pattern will not match a / in the pathname. For example,
               "Documentation/*.html" matches "Documentation/git.html" but not
               "Documentation/ppc/ppc.html" or
               "tools/perf/Documentation/perf.html".

               Two consecutive asterisks ("**") in patterns matched against
               full pathname may have special meaning:

               o   A leading "**" followed by a slash means match in all
                   directories. For example, "**/foo" matches file or
                   directory "foo" anywhere, the same as pattern "foo".
                   "**/foo/bar" matches file or directory "bar" anywhere that
                   is directly under directory "foo".

               o   A trailing "/**" matches everything inside. For example,
                   "abc/**" matches all files inside directory "abc", relative
                   to the location of the .gitignore file, with infinite
                   depth.

               o   A slash followed by two consecutive asterisks then a slash
                   matches zero or more directories. For example, "a/**/b"
                   matches "a/b", "a/x/b", "a/x/y/b" and so on.

               o   Other consecutive asterisks are considered invalid.

                   Glob magic is incompatible with literal magic.

           attr
               After attr: comes a space separated list of "attribute
               requirements", all of which must be met in order for the path
               to be considered a match; this is in addition to the usual
               non-magic pathspec pattern matching. See gitattributes(5).

               Each of the attribute requirements for the path takes one of
               these forms:

               o   "ATTR" requires that the attribute ATTR be set.

               o   "-ATTR" requires that the attribute ATTR be unset.

               o   "ATTR=VALUE" requires that the attribute ATTR be set to the
                   string VALUE.

               o   "!ATTR" requires that the attribute ATTR be unspecified.

                   Note that when matching against a tree object, attributes
                   are still obtained from working tree, not from the given
                   tree object.

           exclude
               After a path matches any non-exclude pathspec, it will be run
               through all exclude pathspecs (magic signature: ! or its
               synonym ^). If it matches, the path is ignored. When there is
               no non-exclude pathspec, the exclusion is applied to the result
               set as if invoked without any pathspec.

       parent
           A commit object contains a (possibly empty) list of the logical
           predecessor(s) in the line of development, i.e. its parents.

       peel
           The action of recursively dereferencing a tag object.

       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.

       per-worktree ref
           Refs that are per-worktree, rather than global. This is presently
           only HEAD and any refs that start with refs/bisect/, but might
           later include other unusual refs.

       pseudoref
           A ref that has different semantics than normal refs. These refs can
           be read via normal Git commands, but cannot be written to by
           commands like git-update-ref(1).

           The following pseudorefs are known to Git:

           o   FETCH_HEAD is written by git-fetch(1) or git-pull(1). It may
               refer to multiple object IDs. Each object ID is annotated with
               metadata indicating where it was fetched from and its fetch
               status.

           o   MERGE_HEAD is written by git-merge(1) when resolving merge
               conflicts. It contains all commit IDs which are being merged.

       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 an 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.

       reachability bitmaps
           Reachability bitmaps store information about the reachability of a
           selected set of commits in a packfile, or a multi-pack index
           (MIDX), to speed up object search. The bitmaps are stored in a
           ".bitmap" file. A repository may have at most one bitmap file in
           use. The bitmap file may belong to either one pack, or the
           repository's multi-pack index (if it exists).

       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 name that points to an object name or another ref (the latter is
           called a symbolic ref). For convenience, a ref can sometimes be
           abbreviated when used as an argument to a Git command; see
           gitrevisions(7) for details. Refs are stored in the repository.

           The ref namespace is hierarchical. Ref names must either start with
           refs/ or be located in the root of the hierarchy. For the latter,
           their name must follow these rules:

           o   The name consists of only upper-case characters or underscores.

           o   The name ends with "_HEAD" or is equal to "HEAD".

               There are some irregular refs in the root of the hierarchy that
               do not match these rules. The following list is exhaustive and
               shall not be extended in the future:

           o   AUTO_MERGE

           o   BISECT_EXPECTED_REV

           o   NOTES_MERGE_PARTIAL

           o   NOTES_MERGE_REF

           o   MERGE_AUTOSTASH

               Different subhierarchies are used for different purposes. For
               example, the refs/heads/ hierarchy is used to represent local
               branches whereas the refs/tags/ hierarchy is used to represent
               local tags..

       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. See git-fetch(1) or git-push(1)
           for details.

       remote repository
           A repository which is used to track the same project but resides
           somewhere else. To communicate with remotes, see fetch or push.

       remote-tracking branch
           A ref that is used to follow changes from another repository. It
           typically looks like refs/remotes/foo/bar (indicating that it
           tracks a branch named bar in a remote named foo), and matches the
           right-hand-side of a configured fetch refspec. A remote-tracking
           branch should not contain direct modifications or have local
           commits made to it.

       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 clone
           Mostly a synonym to shallow repository but the phrase makes it more
           explicit that it was created by running git clone --depth=...
           command.

       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).

       stash entry
           An object used to temporarily store the contents of a dirty working
           directory and the index for future reuse.

       submodule
           A repository that holds the history of a separate project inside
           another repository (the latter of which is called superproject).

       superproject
           A repository that references repositories of other projects in its
           working tree as submodules. The superproject knows about the names
           of (but does not hold copies of) commit objects of the contained
           submodules.

       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 (also treeish)
           A tree object or an object that can be recursively dereferenced to
           a tree object. Dereferencing a commit object yields the tree object
           corresponding to the revision's top directory. The following are
           all tree-ishes: a commit-ish, a tree object, a tag object that
           points to a tree object, a tag object that points to a tag object
           that points to a tree object, etc.

       unborn
           The HEAD can point at a branch that does not yet exist and that
           does not have any commit on it yet, and such a branch is called an
           unborn branch. The most typical way users encounter an unborn
           branch is by creating a repository anew without cloning from
           elsewhere. The HEAD would point at the main (or master, depending
           on your configuration) branch that is yet to be born. Also some
           operations can get you on an unborn branch with their orphan
           option.

       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.

       worktree
           A repository can have zero (i.e. bare repository) or one or more
           worktrees attached to it. One "worktree" consists of a "working
           tree" and repository metadata, most of which are shared among other
           worktrees of a single repository, and some of which are maintained
           separately per worktree (e.g. the index, HEAD and pseudorefs like
           MERGE_HEAD, per-worktree refs and per-worktree configuration file).


SEE ALSO

       gittutorial(7), gittutorial-2(7), gitcvs-migration(7), giteveryday(7),
       The Git User's Manual[1]


GIT

       Part of the git(1) suite


NOTES

        1. The Git User's Manual
           git-htmldocs/user-manual.html

Git 2.46.0                        2024-07-29                    gitglossary(7)

git 2.46.0 - Generated Sat Aug 17 16:45:42 CDT 2024
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