Re: bug - Inconsistency of git status and branch, ./git/branches and ./git/HEAD

On Sat, Sep 30, 2023 at 4:06 AM Irina Gulina <igulina@redhat.com> wrote:

Although this seems weird, it is in fact normal.

This situation in Git -- where you are on a branch that does not exist -- is called an "orphan branch" or an "unborn branch" (which term is used depends on which bit of documentation you read).

The unborn / orphan current branch becomes "born" (begins to exist) once you make a commit while on it. If you move to a different branch, the unborn branch never comes into existence.

A new, empty repository cannot have any branches, because a branch is defined as "the latest commit that is on the branch" (this definition is unsatisfyingly circular, but that too is what it is). With no commits in the repository, no branches can exist. Yet you must be "on" some branch. Hence the existence of unborn branches, which are born when you make a new commit. That first commit creates the first branch name as well as the first commit.

Creating a new commit while on an unborn branch causes the new commit to have no parent commit. This, too, is normal and natural in a new empty repository, but it holds true for the situation in which you create a new unborn / orphan branch using `git checkout --orphan` or `git switch --orphan` while in a non-empty repository. You don't normally want to do this, but it's sometimes useful for some special oddball cases.

Chris