Re: [PATCH] Detached HEAD (experimental)

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Jan 11, 2007, 00:34 UTC
Message-ID: <7vslei764u.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <20070110140432.GA20868@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

> On Tue, Jan 09, 2007 at 03:46:32PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
>> I would suggest a solution:
>> 
>>  - git checkout will refuse to switch AWAY from a detached head unless the 
>>    SHA1 of the detached head exactly matches some other branch.
>
> What about
>
>   git checkout HEAD~20
>
> I agree that checking out tags will be more common, but it feels like we
> are discouraging this usage by presenting spurious warning messages.

Once the user knows what HEAD~20 means, I think it is safe to assume that the user knows what the branches are.

"git checkout master" will barf and suggests the user possible common exits; "checkout -f" if there is nothing of value, "checkout -b <branch>" or if they want to build on the current state.

And once the user who knows what the branches are sees such, and especially with the help from $PS1 hack of bash-completion in contrib/ section, the user will learn to do "checkout -f" after wandering around for sightseeing on a detached HEAD, and at that point the annoying error message will not be even seen.