Re: [PATCH 5/6] status: do not depend on flaky reflog messages

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jun 14, 2013, 14:52 UTC
Message-ID: <7v38sksq14.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CALkWK0k28u583Jci+Dvad1pbu7_dJdnmz1WBkP790a_t2QdPTg@mail.gmail.com>

Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com> writes:

Show 11 quoted lines

> In this example, it is inconsequential whether I run:
>
>   $ git checkout v1.8.2^
>
> or:
>
>   $ git checkout v1.8.2
>   $ git reset --hard @^
>
> as far as describe is concerned.  It will give me the same good
> consistent answer in either case.

Yes, "describe HEAD" is about the location in the history of the commit at the current HEAD.

But the commit shown on "detached at/detached from" is for people who care about the differences between the initial "checkout" you did in these two examples: "checkout v1.8.2^" and "checkout v1.8.2".

That is different from the question you ask to "describe", which is the location your HEAD happens to be in the commit ancestry graph after you detached the HEAD with "checkout" and possibly jumping around. If you say "Not on any branch" instead of saying "detached from v1.8.2" (or v1.8.2^), you are losing information, aren't you?

As I said (twice), you can argue that that particular piece of information is not useful (at least to you), but why it is not useful has to be justified, against the justification given by b397ea4863a1 (status: show more info than "currently not on any branch", 2013-03-13) and people who have been using that information in the status output, no?

Show 10 quoted lines

>> The user used "checkout" to detach the HEAD, and the user stayed in
>> that detached state and jumped around.  Where is this "without using
>> checkout" coming from?
>
> The point I was trying to make is:
>
>   $ git checkout v1.8.2
>   $ git checkout @^
>
> will give a different result once again.

The last checkout is for HEAD^ while at v1.8.2 in this case, isn't it? Don't you want to show it?