Proposal: 'git checkout refs/heads/foo' (or 'git checkout heads/foo' for that matter) does not check out the branch, but instead detaches HEAD at foo. This is quite counter-intuitive (at least to me) and the same functionality can be achieved by using e.g. foo~0. Change the behavior so that the branch is actually checked out. This also applies to e.g. 'git rebase master refs/heads/topic', which currently rebases a detached HEAD. There are probably other examples as well that I'm not aware of. Risks: Existing scripts may depend on the current behavior. It seems unlikely that many users depend on it. Most likely, they use foo~0 or foo^0 instead. Migration plan: Make 'git checkout refs/head/foo' emit a warning in the next 1.7.x explaining that its semantics will change in 1.8.0. Then change the behavior in 1.8.0 and remove the warning. -- 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