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Mon, 19 Oct 2026 17:24:25 -0400 (EDT) From: Junio C Hamano To: "Julia Evans" Cc: "Julia Evans" , git@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] doc: checkout: rewrite detached HEAD state explanation In-Reply-To: <9c15d34e-406d-4702-b606-da102a340e71@app.fastmail.com> (Julia Evans's message of "Mon, 19 Oct 2026 10:05:58 -0400") References: <9c15d34e-406d-4702-b606-da102a340e71@app.fastmail.com> Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2026 14:24:24 -0700 Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: List-Owner: Precedence: list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit "Julia Evans" writes: > Let me know if this is a helpful way for you to bring some user perspectives > into the conversation. Like I said earlier I don't really think it's possible to > discuss how to explain HEAD in a vacuum so maybe these quotes will help! It surely is more helpful than "I think it is not better" that is not backed by anything. > Also if you could give me any ideas for how to reply in a "shorter" way than > "I don't think this is clearer" let me know, I can't bring you quotes from user > research to justify every single wording choice :) IOW, "Trust me" ;-) It is often good enough among those who have worked together for some time, and you certainly do qualify. > - "HEAD is a mysterious thing I never need to know about unless something has > g-one wrong, eg. merge conflicts." Somebody may have said so, but how does bringing it (together with many other examples) up in _this_ discussion help us find a better way to explain it to users? Somebody is clueless about HEAD and does not feel the need to understand it until they really need to. This fact alone, that they can get going with such a sketchy understanding and make use of Git sufficiently well may be a great thing by itself. It may support an argument that we do not really have to explain what HEAD is to our readers. Is that the argument you are making? I won't comment on each and every one of them, but is your point that many potential readers do not understand HEAD and doing fine? Of course there are a handful of examples that they do get it, like this one. > - "HEAD is a reference to a commit, either directly or indirectly. A direct > commit is just in detached state, where HEAD is looking at the commit itself. > An indirect reference would be the case you’ve shown above, where HEAD is a > reference to a reference." But what did you want to illustrate again? I am little bit fuzzy on what you wanted to achieve by dumping these at me. Thanks.