Re: master^ is not a local branch -- huh?!?

From: Nicolas Pitre <nico@fluxnic.net>
Date: Jan 29, 2010, 21:20 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.00.1001291614550.1681@xanadu.home>
In-Reply-To: <7veil8iqnj.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Fri, 29 Jan 2010, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> Sverre Rabbelier <srabbelier@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> >> master^ is a commit (the first parent of master), not a branch (local
> >> or otherwise).
> >
> > Perhaps we should change the message to say "not a branch" if it's not
> > a reference to a remote branch? Or simply changing the text to "not a
> > (local) branch"?
> 
> I think "not a branch" is a good suggestion, whether the target of
> checkout is "master^" or "origin/topic".
> 
> These days, you can say "git checkout topic" to automagically create a
> local "topic" branch that forks from "origin/topic" remote tracking branch
> when you have one, thanks to Dscho's UI improvement ideas (one less
> reason you may end up on a detached HEAD state without wanting to).

If this is the case then I'm really disappointed.

With all due respects, I don't share Dscho's sentiment about Git's alleged non user-friendliness. And I always praised Git's ability to use a detached head to check out a remote branch, and never had any problem teaching this concept to people. So the above is not a UI improvement at all to me.

Nicolas