Alyssa Ross <hi@xxxxxxxxx> writes: >> The commit the message shows is meant to indicate where your unnamed >> branch diverged at named branches. Immediately after moving to the >> unnamed branch by detaching the HEAD, the message says "at"; the >> HEAD is pointing directly at the tip of the then-current branch and >> that is where the tip of the unnamed branch is. You can tell from >> that message that you will not lose any commit if you were to check >> out a named branch from that state. >> >> After you make a commit on the unnamed branch, you have something to >> lose if you were to check out a named branch from that state, as the >> detached HEAD is the _only_ thing these new commits you built on top >> of the fork point. Upon seeing "HEAD detached from 9745ede235", you >> could do "git log 9745ede235.." and see what you would end up losing >> if you were to switch to another branch without saving them first to >> a named branch. > > Thank you for the detailed explanation. I was for some reason under the > impression that "git status" would show the current HEAD, rather than > where it was detached. Why I thought that, I don't know. I wrote not from the documentation but from what I remember about the discussion that led to final phrasing of the message, and I strongly suspect that your impression is the sign that our docs are insufficient. If you can spot where we can improve on, that would be great. Thanks.