Once you understand that everything is similar to a tag, like branch names are basically tags that move forward with each commit, that HEAD is a tag that points to your current commit location in history, and what command moves what kind of tag, it becomes easier to understand.

Suddenly having a detached HEAD isn't as scary as you might think. You get a better understanding of fast forward merges vs regular 3-way merge.

Also understanding that each commit is unique and will always remain in the history and can be recovered using special commands. Nothing is lost in git, unless you delete the .git sub-directory.

[–] docAvid@midwest.social 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Orphaned commits can get garbage collected at some point, though.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Oh fuck. I didn't think of that. Than you for reminding me.

Edit: Ah but you can only run this in your local repo. If you happen to push anything, you might not be able to run it on the remote. Many DevOps platforms won't allow it.

[–] docAvid@midwest.social 2 points 8 months ago

Oh yeah, and anybody else who had fetched in those commits may still have them as well. It's hard for something to be gone-gone, but it may be annoyingly-hard-to-recover-gone.

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