Re: Instructions concerning detached head lead to lost local changes

[Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>]

On Thu, 1 Feb 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Alternatively we could add yet another suggestion that let's you
> discard the detached HEAD but still keep your local changes.
> Either --drop by Linus renamed to some sensible name, or "the
> obscure but useful trick".
> 
> I dunno.

I have a feeling that proper reflog for HEAD would make the issue so 
much simpler.

But in the mean time I tend to agree with Ted about the fact that simply 
losing the detached position is not _that_ important.  If you go to 
HEAD^ and want to come back to master I think it should just work (with 
a display of what the last position was as Carl mentioned).

It might be some work to get to a given position with a detached head 
and this very position might be valuable information, but if you then do 
"checkout HEAD^" you will still be detached but your previous position 
is lost just like it would be if you moved to master.  Yet you're not 
prevented from going to HEAD^ but you are prevented from going to 
master.

Same issue if you perform a commit on top of a detached head.  Nothing 
prevents you from doing "checkout HEAD^" which will leave your head 
detached but it will also silently drop your last commit dangling.

In short I think there is no magic solution other than proper reflog for 
HEAD.


Nicolas