Re: [PATCH] Proof-of-concept patch to remember what the detached HEAD was

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 12:33:22PM +0200, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

quoted

quoted

quoted

+char *get_detached_head_string(void)
+{
+	char *filename = git_path("DETACH_NAME");
+	struct stat st;
+	if (stat(filename, &st) || !S_ISREG(st.st_mode))
+		return NULL;
+	struct strbuf buf = STRBUF_INIT;
+	strbuf_read_file(&buf, filename, st.st_size);
+	strbuf_trim(&buf);
+	return strbuf_detach(&buf, 0);
+}

Would it hurt to tuck this information into HEAD itself, as we already
put arbitrary text into FETCH_HEAD?

AFAIR we still remember HEAD to be a symlink.

I think that has been abandoned for detached HEAD (that is, if you
support only symlinked HEAD, then you cannot detach at all). But I might
be wrong. It has been a while since I looked at that code.

If I understand what Daniel is doing correctly, the idea is to keep this
extra information only while the HEAD is detached, no?  "HEAD itself
could be a symlink" is an irrelevant issue, isn't it?