On 23/01/14 07:49PM, Junio C Hamano wrote: > <rsbecker@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > [...] > > An orphan is not even detached, if I understand correctly. > > The state is what is called "being on an unborn branch", where your > HEAD does not even point at any commit. HEAD only knows a name of a > branch that is not yet created but will be when you make a commit. > > While "(HEAD) being detached" means that you are on an existing > commit---it is just that future history you extend by making a > commit from that state will not be on any branch. > > So if we wanted to fix the misnomer, s/orphan/unborn/ would be how I > would go about it. > I would support making this change (s/orphan/unborn/) as it's definitely less confusing. Especially given that orphan already has a completely different, overloaded meaning when referring to orphaned objects & commits (in the context of garbage collection).
