Re: Difficulties in advertising a new branch to git newbies

Theodore Tso [off-list ref] writes:

...  Just because we don't have a name to that precise commit
inside the git system doesn't necessary mean the user can't get back
there.
In fact, the user probably could via "history | grep 'git checkout'".

If you mean grep 'git checkout|git reset' perhaps.  After
checking out a specific commit (because the user was told about
the commit out-of-band, say, via e-mail), the user can still
visit other commits with e.g. "git reset --hard HEAD~20".

quoted

So "until you make commits" is not sufficient, which means that
covering all the way you can make commits isn't, either.

My personal belief is that covering all the way you can make commits
is where you want to be putting the check.  If I say something like

git checkout f00b51b8

There's nothing dangerous about that statement.

I do not think anybody is arguing that particular checkout is
dangerous.  The warning message is about the fact that your HEAD
is now detached, which might not have been what you intended
(and you will later get a real warning when you do a really
dangerous thing, which is "to come back and lose your point").