Re: Git in a Nutshell guide

On Nov 19, 2007 2:05 PM, Jonas Juselius <jonas.juselius@chem.uit.no> wrote:

Very nice introduction, but I have a couple of comments.

In "Specifying revisions" you say that '^' and '~' are equal, but that is not true. ^ is used to select the first parent of a commit, ^2 selects the second parent of a merge commit (and ^3 selects the third parent of an octopus merge), while the '~' is used to go back any number of generations, following the first parents of each commit (~ selects the first parent, ~2 selects the first grand-parent etc).

Also, I think you might scare users away from 'git reset':

  git reset resets the branch to a specified state invisibly and
  without possibility to go back. Ever. Your call.

That's not true, since any "modern" git has reflogs enabled. If you do 'git reset --hard HEAD^^^' and then realize it was a mistake you can just 'git reset --hard HEAD@{1}'