Re: [PATCH] Proof-of-concept patch to remember what the detached HEAD was

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 12:33:22PM +0200, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
>
>> > > +char *get_detached_head_string(void)
>> > > +{
>> > > +	char *filename = git_path("DETACH_NAME");
>> > > +	struct stat st;
>> > > +	if (stat(filename, &st) || !S_ISREG(st.st_mode))
>> > > +		return NULL;
>> > > +	struct strbuf buf = STRBUF_INIT;
>> > > +	strbuf_read_file(&buf, filename, st.st_size);
>> > > +	strbuf_trim(&buf);
>> > > +	return strbuf_detach(&buf, 0);
>> > > +}
>> > 
>> > Would it hurt to tuck this information into HEAD itself, as we already
>> > put arbitrary text into FETCH_HEAD?
>> 
>> AFAIR we still remember HEAD to be a symlink.
>
> I think that has been abandoned for detached HEAD (that is, if you
> support only symlinked HEAD, then you cannot detach at all). But I might
> be wrong. It has been a while since I looked at that code.

If I understand what Daniel is doing correctly, the idea is to keep this
extra information only while the HEAD is detached, no?  "HEAD itself
could be a symlink" is an irrelevant issue, isn't it?