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

From: Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 14, 2013, 14:01 UTC
Message-ID: <CALkWK0k28u583Jci+Dvad1pbu7_dJdnmz1WBkP790a_t2QdPTg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vppvosstl.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano wrote:

> The part you stripped from your quote looked like this:

Apologies for the lack of clarity.

Show 16 quoted lines

>>> You were at 1.8.2 but no longer are, so in the following sequence:
>>>
>>>     $ git checkout v1.8.2
>>>     $ git status
>>>     $ git reset --hard HEAD^
>>>     $ git status
>>>
>>> the former would say "detached at v1.8.2" while the latter should
>>> *not*, because we are no longer at v1.8.2.  "detached from v1.8.2"
>>> is too subtle a way to express the state, and is confusing, but I
>>> would not be surprised if people find it useful to be able to learn
>>> "v1.8.2" even after you strayed away.
>
> And your justification to make the latter "git status" to say "Not
> on any branch" instead of "detached from" was "what is wrong with
> describe".

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.

> 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. As the end-user, I use checkout to inspect detached HEAD states, and reset to update worktree/refs.

Did my response to your examples make sense? Are you convinced that this feature should be removed yet?