Re: Git rescue mission

Linus Torvalds [off-list ref] writes:

For example, a command like "git pull" will leave a special magic name 
around to tell you what the original HEAD was before the pull, and that 
magic name is (surprise surprise) called ORIG_HEAD. So if the pull 
succeeded, but you realized it was an error (perhaps you had even intended 
to do it, but once you pulled, you just saw that what you pulled was crap, 
so you decide that you didn't really want to do it after all), you can 
just do

	git reset --hard ORIG_HEAD

and you're back to where you were _before_ the pull.

I usually undo a pull by throwing away just the merge commit by

        git reset --hard HEAD^

This seems to always get me back to the head commit I had previously, but I'm
wondering would git in some circumstances leave me with the commits I just pulled
and throw away my own work instead. Or is it guaranteed that I always reset
to the parent commit I had before the pull (i.e. ORIG_HEAD)?

Of course HEAD^ doesn't work the same with fast-forward merges, so it would
probably make more sense to just use ORIG_HEAD all the time.