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user-manual: more discussion of detached heads, fix typos
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Nicolas Pitre pointed out a couple typos and some room for improvement
in the discussion of detached heads.

Signed-off-by: "J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@citi.umich.edu>
Cc: Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>
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J. Bruce Fields committed May 7, 2007
1 parent e102d43 commit 953f3d6
Showing 1 changed file with 15 additions and 5 deletions.
20 changes: 15 additions & 5 deletions Documentation/user-manual.txt
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -527,17 +527,16 @@ and git branch shows that you are no longer on a branch:
------------------------------------------------
$ cat .git/HEAD
427abfa28afedffadfca9dd8b067eb6d36bac53f
git branch
$ git branch
* (no branch)
master
------------------------------------------------

In this case we say that the HEAD is "detached".

This can be an easy way to check out a particular version without having
to make up a name for a new branch. However, keep in mind that when you
switch away from the (for example, by checking out something else), you
can lose track of what the HEAD used to point to.
This is an easy way to check out a particular version without having to
make up a name for the new branch. You can still create a new branch
(or tag) for this version later if you decide to.

Examining branches from a remote repository
-------------------------------------------
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -1560,8 +1559,19 @@ $ git show master@{2} # See where the branch pointed 2,
$ git show master@{3} # 3, ... changes ago.
$ gitk master@{yesterday} # See where it pointed yesterday,
$ gitk master@{"1 week ago"} # ... or last week
$ git log --walk-reflogs master # show reflog entries for master
-------------------------------------------------

A separate reflog is kept for the HEAD, so

-------------------------------------------------
$ git show HEAD@{"1 week ago"}
-------------------------------------------------

will show what HEAD pointed to one week ago, not what the current branch
pointed to one week ago. This allows you to see the history of what
you've checked out.

The reflogs are kept by default for 30 days, after which they may be
pruned. See gitlink:git-reflog[1] and gitlink:git-gc[1] to learn
how to control this pruning, and see the "SPECIFYING REVISIONS"
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