From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2011 20:59:34 GMT
Subject: Re: [1.8.0] git checkout refs/heads/foo checks out branch foo
Message-ID: <20110207205934.GD13461@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.10.1102062234010.3788@debian>

On Mon, Feb 07, 2011 at 06:01:51AM -0500, Martin von Zweigbergk wrote:

> 'git checkout refs/heads/foo' (or 'git checkout heads/foo' for that
> matter) does not check out the branch, but instead detaches HEAD at
> foo. This is quite counter-intuitive (at least to me) and the same
> functionality can be achieved by using e.g. foo~0. Change the behavior
> so that the branch is actually checked out. This also applies to
> e.g. 'git rebase master refs/heads/topic', which currently rebases a
> detached HEAD. There are probably other examples as well that I'm not
> aware of.

I have seen that behavior claimed as intentional, but I agree it is
unintuitive. In most other places referring to a ref by a short name or
a fully qualified name is equivalent (except with respect to
disambiguating short names, of course).

> Existing scripts may depend on the current behavior. It seems unlikely
> that many users depend on it. Most likely, they use foo~0 or foo^0
> instead.

As cool and clever as the foo^0 behavior is once you understand it, I
think it is a horribly confusing thing for non-experts. As part of this
proposal, should we perhaps offer "git checkout --detach" as the
easy-on-the-eyes way of intentionally detaching?

-Peff