From: Heiko Voigt Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2011 21:11:27 GMT Subject: Re: [1.8.0] git checkout refs/heads/foo checks out branch foo Message-ID: <20110207211127.GG63976@book.hvoigt.net> In-Reply-To: Hallo Martin, On Mon, Feb 07, 2011 at 06:01:51AM -0500, Martin von Zweigbergk wrote: > Proposal: > > '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. Just to clarify: You are not proposing that 'git checkout origin/master' would also not checkout to a detached head, right? Because that is a feature I am using frequently to test branches that have been pushed by another developer to a remote server. If that would create a new local branch that would be confusing. Cheers Heiko