Re: Missing features in git

Linus Torvalds [off-list ref] writes:

On Tue, 14 Nov 2006, Shawn Pearce wrote:

quoted

That's not a bad idea.  Then you can checkout a tag and have
'ref: refs/tags/v1.11' in HEAD, which means anyone who puts
$(git-symbolic-ref) calls into their PS1 will see "refs/tags/v1.11"
as their current branch, reminding them they are looking at the past.

I agree. This would probably be a good way to do "read-only branches".
...
Junio, what do you think? It wouldn't even be backwards incompatible, 
because we're strictly allowing a superset of what we used to..

(late reply -- just came back from a clinic)

I do not see any fundamental reason not to allow HEAD to be a
commit that you cannot commit on top of because you are not on
any branch, and I agree it is the right way to go.

I am not sure how much pain we are talking about yet though.