Infrastructure for current directory handling

[stgit] / Documentation / stg.txt

diff --git a/Documentation/stg.txt b/Documentation/stg.txt
index 60a6f9cd8b4b8a1f636e03b03678dc56c7915aca..4f9d18e7ca680a15569d146a37d1275e11896daf 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/stg.txt
+++ b/Documentation/stg.txt
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-stg(7)
+stg(1)
 ======
 Yann Dirson <ydirson@altern.org>
 v0.12.1, February 2007
@@ -10,7 +10,9 @@ stg - manage stacks of patches using the GIT content tracker
 SYNOPSIS
 --------
 [verse]
-'stg' [--version] [--help] <command> [OPTIONS] [ARGS]
+'stg' [--version | --help]
+'stg' [--help <command> | <command> --help]
+'stg' <command> [COMMAND OPTIONS] [ARGS]
 
 DESCRIPTION
 -----------
@@ -21,23 +23,66 @@ GIT. These operations are performed using GIT commands and the patches
 are stored as GIT commit objects, allowing easy merging of the StGIT
 patches into other repositories using standard GIT functionality.
 
+An StGIT stack is a GIT branch with additional information to help
+making changes to individual patches you already committed, rather
+than making changes by adding new commits.  It is thus a
+non-forwarding, or rewinding branch: the old head of the branch is
+often not reachable as one of the new head's ancestors.
+
 Typical uses of StGIT include:
 
 Tracking branch::
-       Maintaining modifications against a remote branch, possibly
-       with the intent of sending some patches upstream.  StGIT
-       assists in preparing and cleaning up patches until they are
-       acceptable upstream, as well as maintaining local patches not
-       meant to be sent upstream.
+       Tracking changes from a remote branch, while maintaining local
+       modifications against that branch, possibly with the intent of
+       sending some patches upstream.  StGIT assists in preparing and
+       cleaning up patches until they are acceptable upstream, as
+       well as maintaining local patches not meant to be sent
+       upstream.
++
+In such a setup, typically all commits on your branch are StGIT
+patches; the stack base is the branch point where your changes "fork"
+off their parent branch.
 
 Development branch::
        Preparing and testing your commits before publishing them,
        separating your features from unrelated bugfixes collected
        while developping.
++
+In such a setup, not all commits on your branch need to be StGIT
+patches; there may be regular GIT commits below your stack base.
+
+Patches
+~~~~~~~
+
+Many StGIT commands take references to StGIT patches as arguments.
+Patches in the stack are identified with short names, each of which
+must be unique in the stack.
+
+Patches in the current stack are just referred to by their name.  Some
+commands allow you to specify a patch in another stack of the repository;
+this is done by suffixing the patch name with an '@' sign followed by the
+branch name (eg. 'thispatch@otherbranch').
+
+A number of positions in the stack related to the patch are also
+accessible through '//' suffixes.  For example, 'patch//top' is
+equivalent to 'patch', and 'patch//bottom' refers to the commit below
+'patch' (i.e. the patch below, or the stack base if this is the
+bottom-most patch).  Similarly '//top.old' and '//bottom.old'
+refer to the previous version of the patch (before the last
+stglink:push[] or stglink:refresh[] operation).  When referring to the
+current patch, its name can be omitted (eg. 'currentpatch//bottom.old'
+can be abbreviated as 'bottom.old').
+
+If you need to pass a given StGIT reference to a git command,
+stglink:id[] will convert it to a git commit id.
 
 OPTIONS
 -------
 
+The following generic option flags are available.  Additional options
+are available per-command, and documented in the command-specific
+documentation.
+
 --version::
        Prints the StGIT suite version that the 'stg' program came
        from, as well as version of other components used, such as GIT
@@ -117,6 +162,8 @@ stglink:goto[]::
        stgdesc:goto[]
 stglink:float[]::
        stgdesc:float[]
+stglink:sink[]::
+       stgdesc:sink[]
 stglink:applied[]::
        stgdesc:applied[]
 stglink:unapplied[]::