Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > Sergey Organov <sorganov@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> To me "not on a branch [tip]" is also confusing, as in fact you are, as >> is easily seen after you perform a few commits, and now HEAD points >> directly to the tip of the branch (that has no other references). > > Aren't you confused about what "on a branch" means? I believe I'm not. > > After either of these two operations, your HEAD may point at the > same commit, but the former is on a branch (the master branch), and > the latter is not. > > git checkout master > git checkout master^0 > > The difference between these two states does *NOT* come from which > commit HEAD points at. Sure. > > The difference comes from what happens when you make a new commit > starting from that state. The former (i.e. you are on a branch) > grows the branch. Sure. > The latter (i.e. you are not on a branch) does not grow any branch. That's one way of looking at it, resulting in this "detached HEAD" thingy that is too technical for the git user proper, I think. Moreover, it immediately raises the question: if it doesn't grow any branch, /what/ does it grow? Another way of describing it, that I prefer, is that you /are/ on an /unnamed/ branch and new commits grow this particular /unnamed/ branch. No need not only for "detached", but even for "HEAD" to be known to the user to get the idea, I think. > > This is an unrelated trivia, but did anybody know that we were > pretty much on the detached HEAD all the time for more than a month > of early life of Git, until cad88fdf (git-init-db: set up the full > default environment, 2005-05-30)? I was not aware, and it seems that in my terminology it'd sound: "Git didn't have named branches until cad88fdf". -- Sergey
