Re: ephemeral-branches instead of detached-head?

From: David Jeske <davidj@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 12, 2013, 12:14 UTC
Message-ID: <CA+CP9O7--HXQdZXH9MJEh0VqdwpYqb052KYrvZqYhbfajpPG0A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CA+CP9O5fhyQrn3SboafocWJjaAywJHC0T-bw+AXk_8RX53hJ6Q@mail.gmail.com>

@Junio - to put the issue in the context of your previous comments on the topic... way back when you made a comment about warnings during commits to detached heads..

http://git.661346.n2.nabble.com/RFC-Detached-HEAD-reminder-on-commit-td834710.html#a834959

> If we _really_ don't want newbies to shoot themselves in the foot, we
> probably can issue a loud warning when they detach there HEAD.
> Oh, wait,... we already do that.

The reason this rationale doesn't ring true for me, is that it is *very* common for me to checkout a detached-head and there is nothing odd or dangerous about it. I do this when using checkout to move around the history to inspect, build, and test different revisions. As a result, it's very easy to just start ignoring this (usually meaningless) message.

The dangerous situation only occurs when something is committed onto a detached-head, and at this point there is no warning. The "# Not currently on any branch" message that appears during "git status" easily blends in with boilerplate text there.

IMO, the current warning during checkout of a detached-head is misplaced. It should be removed, and instead there should only be a warning after detached-head commit, since this is the only time there is a danger of losing something.

With my proposed "ephemeral branch" concept, there is no warning necessary in either case, since any check-ins left dangling would get names in the branch space you could see and take a look at. If that dangling head was temporary and was named or rebased, the ephemeral branch name would disappear automatically, leaving the expert-user with no warnings and no annoyance, while the novice user with a simple tool to help them not lose track of changes they made.