Re: [PATCH] tone down the detached head warning

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Feb 1, 2007, 03:00 UTC
Message-ID: <20070201030030.GA1979@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0701311907500.3021@xanadu.home>

On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 07:11:34PM -0500, Nicolas Pitre wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> No.  This is misleading.
> 
> You are _not_ on the remote tracking branch.  You just happen to have 
> checked out a commit that came from a tracking branch, but you are still 
> detached from any branch at that point.

Sure, but that is a very subtle distinction that I doubt will make sense to git newbies. Having them check out what they consider to be a branch (and which is, in fact, a line of development -- just not one that you have locally marked as a head) and responding with "you are not on ANY branch" is a little off-putting.

Is there some text we can use that makes more sense in all situations?

I think part of the "scariness" of the message is that git-checkout does not _usually_ produce output. I wonder if, when switching HEAD, it usually printed "Now on branch <foo>", and for detached printed some special variant, it would seem more natural.

-Peff