Re: [RFC] Introduce .git/BRANCH to point to the current branch

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

That's definitely not an important point, but I find it conveinient, for example in hg, to be able to just "hg update" to get to the tip of a branch.

A use-case (which joins the one of Salikh actually) is to publish both a repository and a working tree (I do that for my collegues which may or (usually) may not use git). Making a hook to update the working tree after a push is a terrible hack in git, and just "hg update" in Mercurial.

(once again, that's one point in favor of base separate from current branch, but it doesn't cancel the possible drawbacks. It seems the thread "Reverting the whole index-base series" at http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/44360/focus=44525 is interesting to read, I'll dig a bit more.

As you mention in the thread, detaching head when pushing to a checked-out branch would probably be an interesting option)