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

From: Ron Garret <ron1@flownet.com>
Date: Feb 2, 2010, 01:12 UTC
Message-ID: <ron1-1E906F.17124201022010@news.gmane.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vk4uwmp95.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

In article <7vk4uwmp95.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>,
 Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> Ron Garret <ron1@flownet.com> writes:
> 
> > The manual specifically contradicts you, so either you are wrong or the 
> > manual is wrong.
> 
> In case you haven't noticed, Pasky is one of the old timers and he knows a
> thing or two about the git's world model.

My intent was not to diss Pasky, it was just to point out a disconnect between what he was saying and what the manual says. It's quite possible that the manual is wrong or out of date or just misleading. But it says what it says.

> And I do not see a contradiction in what the manual describes and "a
> branch is a named pointer to a commit" (although "named" can probably be
> omitted as "unnamed pointer" is not useful at the UI level).

But that's not what the manual says. The manual says, "When we need to be precise, we will use the word "branch" to mean a line of development..." Those are the first words in the section entitled "Understanding history: What is a branch?" It certainly appears to the untrained eye that that is intended to be the definition of a branch.

Maybe the manual just needs to be updated. "A named pointer to a commit" is a useful definition, and a lot clearer than "a line of development" (I don't even know what that means). I do think it's important to keep "named" to distinguish them from, for example, SHA1 hashes which are (or at least can be) unnamed pointers to commits.

In fact, the whole issue of detached/attached HEAD comes down to whether HEAD is a direct reference to a commit through its hash, or an indirect reference to a commit through a named reference that it "drags along" the next time a commit is, er, committed. :-)

BTW, my intent here is not to critique git's design, or to pump myself up as some kind of an expert or to cut anybody down or anything like that. I'm just trying to point out how what is written down can lead to confusion for someone who doesn't know what's going on, and to make some constructive suggestions on how the situation could be improved. That's all.

rg