On Mon, 1 Feb 2010, Junio C Hamano wrote: > I do not think we need yet another term "scratchpad" for this, but what is > important is that both introductory and full documentation explain the > detached HEAD well. > > Currently we say: > > Detached HEAD > ------------- > > It is sometimes useful to be able to 'checkout' a commit that is > not at the tip of one of your branches. The most obvious > example is to check out the commit at a tagged official release > point, like this: > > ------------ > $ git checkout v2.6.18 > ------------ > > Earlier versions of git did not allow this and asked you to > create a temporary branch using the `-b` option, but starting from > version 1.5.0, the above command 'detaches' your HEAD from the > current branch and directly points at the commit named by the tag > (`v2.6.18` in the example above). > > If read carefully (some may argue that it does not need a very careful > reading to get it, though), this hints that "detached HEAD" state is a > substitute for using a temporary branch, but it may not be strong enough. > > I thought that a documentation update in this area was already planned? Jay Soffian (added to CC) agreed to augment the documentation with the comprehensive explanation he posted to the list lately. Nicolas -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html