Historical errata for Pragmatic Guide to Git

leading but no ending parenthesis, " (see Task 7, Committing Changes…"

(Version: 2010-8-29)

What about working with older files and getting them out of the repository to see how a file has changed. With subversion, this is fairly intuitive, but for people who are new to the DVCS, this is a little bit out of the ordinary.

What about adding a section on comparing differences with a graphical tool? I know you support the merge scenario, but for those people who “like” those tools, they are going to want their tool for comparing differences too. Thanks!

The valid git repo URIs oughta have underscores instead of spaces or different formatting for increased legibility.

eg.
user@host:path_to_repo

Following sentence uses improper English:
“Like most other actions in Git, git rm requires git commit got finalize its action. git rm stages the removal, git commit finalizes it.”

Seems like “got” should be “to”.

Missing an “or” in before:
“Bef\te a Rebase”

I like the style of using facing pages to include a description beside the actual commands being used. I find that this page arrangement is working when viewing the PDF using Acrobat under Mac OS X, but not when using Preview. For example, page “19” talks about installing Git, while page “20” shows the actual commands. Preview shows page “19” as a right-hand page and page “20” as a left-hand page, as you would expect for a physical book. However, this means that these associated pages are split into separate page pairs in Preview. That is, page “18” faces page “19”, and page “20 faces page ”21", as it would in a physical book. Not ideal.

Acrobat doesn’t seem to care about the physical book analogy and just renders the pages sequentially giving the desired facing-page effect - but perhaps for the wrong reason.

Since you’re going to print eventually, I expect you’ll need to adhere to the physical book representation in the PDF to get the desired layout behaviour on screen.

Does all of this make sense?

“rebase takes a series of commits … not worth the trouble.” If there’s a place to explain exactly under what circumstances rebase can go wrong when sharing and how to fix it (or at least provide a pointer to same) this is pretty much it. Since a natural development cycle will involve several merge-in, work, commit, push cycles, at what point is rebase useful as opposed to dangerous? If something does go wrong, how do I fix / deal with it? As written, these two paragraphs create to my mind exactly the kind of FUD mentioned on p.50.

Developers using Xcode on Mac now have git installed by default in /usr/local/git. I think they started doing this fairly recently. The latest Xcode setup installs git version 1.7.1.

third paragraph, line 2. fix: remove word “be”

Maybe you’re be contributing to an open source project

to

Maybe you’re contributing to an open source project

The Guide’s superb “task-oriented two-page spread” (in-depth description, facing quick command reference) is broken in the PDF.
When using View>Page Display>Two-Up, the commands for the previous section are shown alongside the description of the following section.
:-((

Considering how the format of this book is very specific - the author intended for the reader to see every item on a two page spread - the “print” of the PDF book is actually COMPLETELY unusable and shows the items exactly in the wrong way - items begin on the right page and end on the left. Differently put, if I want to follow the explanation text glancing at the command line (that the explanation refers to) I ALWAYS have to flip back and forth between the pages. It’s exactly the opposite of what the author intended and renders the book almost unusable (it’s distracting to constantly move back and forth).

Admittedly, there should be a way to tell PDF reader on how to layout the pages, but I have not yet found a way to do so for the Adobe Acrobat reader. If you do know, please let me know.

If not, could your “gerbils” :) please “re-print” the book so that we can read it the way the author intended? Thanks in advance.

Diagram’s text is mangled “Bef e a Rebase”

At the bottom of the page, you start talking about “Tracking Branches” out of the blue. Does that indicate that until now you’ve been discussing non-tracking branches? One sentence describing non-tracking branches (or explaining that until that point, you’d been discussing non-tracking branches) would be very helpful.

The book provides the URI for “the book’s website”, which correctly references this website. This website provides a .zip file for the book’s code (for its examples, presumably.)
However, the zip-file’s size is a mere 160 bytes and shows up in Winzip as vacuous. I’m running WinZip 9.0 SR-1 over WinXP-Pro/SP3.

“Scenario 1: You staged a change to file and want to unstage it…”.

I am wondering if you meant " … a change to a file and want …".

Actually not an errata. Just wanted to suggest to people who had problem with facing pages layout that you need to view the book in Adobe Acrobat Reader in Two-up view with the ‘Show Cover Page in Two-up’ option checked.

For Sumatra PDF reader, simply use the book view instead of the facing view.

Discovered this only after posting to the Sumatra PDF forums.

Hope this helps!

Actually not an errata. Just wanted to suggest to people who had problem with facing pages layout that you need to view the book in Adobe Acrobat Reader in Two-up view with the ‘Show Cover Page in Two-up’ option checked.

For Sumatra PDF reader, simply use the book view instead of the facing view.

Discovered this only after posting to the Sumatra PDF forums.

Hope this helps!

In section 22 “Sending Changes to Remotes”, the second paragraph states:

> Calling `git push` without any parameters causes Git to assume you want to push the current local branch to a branch of the same name on the `origin` repository.

However, that isn’t true. As stated in `man git-push`, if you call `git push` without any arguments it works the same as `git push origin :`. As stated in the section:

> The special refspec : (or +: to allow non-fast-forward updates) directs git to push “matching” branches: for every branch that exists on the local side, the remote side is updated if a branch of the same name already exists on the remote side. This is the default operation mode if no explicit refspec is found (that is neither on the command line nor in any Push line of the corresponding remotes file—-see below).

That means that by default `git push` will push changes to both the local branch that I am currently on as well as other local branches that also exist in `origin`.

I have confirmed this be making changes to two local branches and then running `git push` and seeing that both branches are updated in the remote repository.

In the second paragraph, the last sentence currently reads:

> If you’re shared commits, your best bet is `git revert`.

This probably should read:

> If you’ve shared commits, your best bet is `git revert`.

“Check the history to see the change was moved” , should probably be “Check the history to see whether the change was moved” .

It also appears that the description for git blame -C and git blame -M are reversed.

description of ‘git blame -M’ and ‘git blame -C’ is unclear appears to be reversed.

git-blame man page states that :
-M Detect moved or copied lines within a file
-C In addition to -M, detect lines moved or copied from other files that were
modified in the same commit

Book text appears to say the opposite.

Text for ‘git gc —aggressive’
‘Run a more garbage collection in the most size-optimized way.’

Should probably be:
‘Run a more aggressive garbage collection’
or ‘Run garbage collection in the most size-optimized way.’

Para. 4 starting ‘One gotcha’ goes on to say ‘shows their name with a remote/ prefix’.

I believe this should be ‘with a remotes/ prefix’

That would be consistent with the examples on p.45 and what I see when using git.

“Using a remote branch as your <starting point implies”. “<starting point” is missing the closing angle brace: “”.

Missing a space between ‘excludes’ and ‘file’ in “Your excludesfile can exist…”.

Perhaps add “Task 9, Undoing Uncommitted Changes” and/or “Task 37, Resetting Staged Changes and Commits” to the “Related Tasks” list of “Task 6, Staging Changes to Commit”.

The local client machine does not need to have port 22 open in order to communicate with a remote server over ssh. Port 22 is the default port for the server. The local client will use an unpriveleged port, e.g. 53306.

“For example, you have a repository that points to
v1.0, and your remote repository has a v1.0 that points to a different commit.”

—>

For example, your repository has a v1.0 tag that points to
a particular commit, and your remote repository has a v1.0 tag that points to a different commit.

git push:
:

extra colon on the end of push

prompt> git stash branch []

command is missing the after ‘branch’

prompt> git revert —no-edit de3245fa
Finished one revert.
… launches editor …

it doesn’t launch editor with —no-edit option

“ORIG_HEAD: Refers to the location of HEAD before making any big changes to it such as running git rebase or git reset.”

Also in many other locations in the book: how big is “big”? Better to list the things that are “big”, no?

In Windows (at least on XP) with msysgit,
git config user.name “Your Name”
fails with the error
error: could not lock config file .git/config: No such file or directory
I note that the Windows Explorer GUI won’t let me create a directory named “.git”.
But I can create .git in the msysgit shell:
mkdir .git
Then the original command
git config user.name “Your Name”
succeeds.

In the sentence at the start of the 3rd paragraph, “There are a few limitations to this type of repository clone,” it is not clear that it is referring to shallow repositories instead of cloned repositories. I’d suggest it say something like “There are a few limitations to shallow repository clones.”

This book is for you if you’re status.untracked.start familiar with another VCS such as Subversion

Introduction - Who Is This Book For?
The second sentence in both epub and PDF contains “status.untracked.start”:

…if you’re status.untracked.start familiar…

I think some markup appears as part of the text by mistake - “This book is for you if you’re status.untracked.start familiar with another VCS”

I have the following my ~/.gitignore

Last paragraph of page (titled Who Is This Book For?) contains the string “status.untracked.start” at the beginning of line 3.

The first example is fine, it reads “git fetch ”. The second example confuses me. It reads “git fetch remote local branch:remotes/remote/remote branch”. I am still learning git, so not entirely sure what this should be. But it does appear obvious that <> symbols are missing, and that would help clarify what is meant. For example, did the author intend to write this? “git fetch remote :remotes/remote/” ?

“This book is for you if you’re status.untracked.start familiar” -> “This book is for you if you’re familiar”

Remove

status.untracked.start

in the middle of the last paragraph, near the bottom of the page.

The “report erratum” link at the bottom of the pages should take us to the web page of all errata, not to the form where we report one error. At the bottom of the errata web page should be the form to submit one that hasn’t been reported yet. Or maybe the form should be at the top of the list. At least give us a chance to see what others have reported before submitting a new defect.

The way it’s set up now, the conscientious reader will feel frustrated that he wasted so much time crafting a good error report. He will also feel annoyed that he reported the same error as so many others. Many of your potential error reporters will decide never to report another error.

Second sentence: “They’re integral how Git works…” should read “They’re integral to how Git works…”

propmt -> prompt (3rd one)

In the who is this book for? section
This book is geared for someone new to Git who is looking
to get up to speed quickly. This book is for you if you’re
status.untracked.start familiar with another VCS such as
Subversion and are looking for a quick guide to the Git
landscape or if you’re a quick study and want a concise
guide.

Not sure how the status.untracked.start got into the paragraph.

conerting to Textile - should be converting