Re: fatal: ambiguous argument 'HEAD^': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 9, 2015, 16:24 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq7fnz7e7i.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20150909092042.GC21892@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> The "simplest" way to do that is:
>
>   rm .git/refs/heads/master
>
> but that is not guaranteed to work in future versions of git, and I
> wouldn't recommend it in general.

Yeah, "git checkout -b" has a stronger sibling "git checkout -B" (i.e. I know that the named branch already exists, so this is not a request to create a new one, but to repoint that existing one), but there is no analogue for "git checkout --orphan". That could be worked around with something like this though:

    $ git checkout --orphan hu
    $ git branch -D master
    $ git checkout --orphan master

As I agree with your "amending is better", I do not think allowing an easier access to such a feature is urgent or important, though.

> Probably a better workflow is to create the commit state you _do_ want
> (change files, "git add" them, etc), and then run "git commit --amend"
> to replace the bad commit.