Re: dangling blob which is not dangling at all

[Steven Grimm <koreth@midwinter.com>]

Domenico Andreoli wrote:
> What is this reflog thing and why is required?
>   

It is a log of where each ref pointed at any given time. Or rather, a 
log of changes to refs, with timestamps. It is not *required* per se 
(you can turn it off and almost all of git will continue to work as 
before) but it's handy in that you can say stuff like

git checkout -b newbranch master@"{4 days ago}"

and git will give you a new branch pointing at the rev that master 
pointed to 4 days ago, even if it's a rev that is no longer reachable 
from any of the existing heads (e.g., because you did a "git rebase" and 
the rev in question was replaced by a new one.) Obviously as soon as you 
do a "git gc" you will lose the ability to go back to unreachable revs 
using the reflog.

I primarily use the reflog to undo rebase operations. Not that I need to 
do that very often, but it's occasionally handy, e.g., if there was a 
conflict and I made a mistake while resolving it.

-Steve