Re: master^ is not a local branch -- huh?!?

On Mon, 1 Feb 2010, Junio C Hamano wrote:

I do not think we need yet another term "scratchpad" for this, but what is
important is that both introductory and full documentation explain the
detached HEAD well.

Currently we say:

    Detached HEAD
    -------------

    It is sometimes useful to be able to 'checkout' a commit that is
    not at the tip of one of your branches.  The most obvious
    example is to check out the commit at a tagged official release
    point, like this:

    ------------
    $ git checkout v2.6.18
    ------------

    Earlier versions of git did not allow this and asked you to
    create a temporary branch using the `-b` option, but starting from
    version 1.5.0, the above command 'detaches' your HEAD from the
    current branch and directly points at the commit named by the tag
    (`v2.6.18` in the example above).

If read carefully (some may argue that it does not need a very careful
reading to get it, though), this hints that "detached HEAD" state is a
substitute for using a temporary branch, but it may not be strong enough.

I thought that a documentation update in this area was already planned?

Jay Soffian (added to CC) agreed to augment the documentation with the 
comprehensive explanation he posted to the list lately.


Nicolas