Re: [FIXED PATCH] Make rebase save ORIG_HEAD if changing current branch

Theodore Tso [off-list ref] writes:

On Sun, Jul 06, 2008 at 11:28:36PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

The idea behind ORIG_HEAD is to have an anchoring point before an
operation that moves your HEAD in a drastic way.  Think if it as a
poor-man's reflog -- in fact it predates reflog.

That is why reset saves away the HEAD before it does its thing, so that
you can easily say "Oops, I did not mean it -- reset ORIG_HEAD" to flip
back to the previous state.  Both a fast-forward merge and a real merge
can be undone by resetting back to ORIG_HEAD.

So in that sense:

 (1) ORIG_HEAD is not strictly necessary these days, because we have
     reflogs;

True, but (and please correct me if I'm wrong) ORIG_HEAD will always
be pointing out HEAD before the user typed pretty much any git
porcelein command (which saves HEAD into ORIG_HEAD), but with reflogs,
it you have to paw through multiple HEAD@{n} to find the 'n' which
corresponds to state before executing the git plumbing command, since
multiple git plumbing commands could have updated the HEAD's reflog,
right?

You can always use _branch_ reflog, either in the <branch>@{1} form,
or in @{1} shortcut form.  @{1} should be equovalent to ORIG_HEAD
even for rebase.

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git