I suspect that detaching HEAD before a root commit is not possible by design. What would HEAD contain then!? 'git checkout' seems to corroborate: $ git init Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/test/.git/ $ git checkout --detach fatal: You are on a branch yet to be born Are there some plumbing commands and options that would still allow this, or can I rely on that that it's impossible? Thanks, Gábor -- 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