On 19/11/2020 01:51, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.email> writes: > >> An alternative in the other direction is to go with the 'not currently >> on any branch' (detached at nowhere) but then require users to >> deliberately create their first branch with their chosen name. This >> moves the 'backward incompatibility' to a different place, which may be >> easier to manage. > As has already been mentioned by Peff, I do not think that is a > workable alternative, especially given that people are generally > afraid of and easily get confused by being on a detached HEAD. Yes, our use of the technical phrase 'detached HEAD' is confusing, compared with the more pleasant 'not on any branch', or 'not at a branch tip'. Such is the curse of knowledge. > > And there is no such thing as unborn detached HEAD. Existing > versions of Git would not consider a $GIT_DIR that does not have any > HEAD, which means a new repository created by such an "initially > there is no branch" version of Git cannot be accessed by any > existing versions of Git. Isn't this, essentially, because there is no 'empty/null commit' that we (HEAD) could start at? There have been a few cases where I've been 'annoyed' that we're missing that. (rather than the orphan branch approach) > > It raises the backward incompatibility of such an approach to a > whole new level that is simply unmanageable, I am afraid. OK, accepted. Philip
