CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitshell
Daniel Kobe
Daniel Kobe

Reputation: 9825

How to switch from detached head to attached head in GIT

Sometimes when debugging I'll checkout commits from a branch. This puts me in detached head. Often I can use git checkout - to go back to the branch head. But sometimes I'll checkout multiple commits in a row so this will just bring me back to the last commit. Is there a more surefire way to get back to the head of the branch? Is there a way without typing the whole branch name e.g. git checkout <branch-name>?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 208

Answers (3)

Daniel Kobe
Daniel Kobe

Reputation: 9825

Thanks for the other answer but I came up with another solution

git checkout `git branch --sort=committerdate | tail -1`

git branch --sort=comitterdate will return branches in the order in which they were last checked out.

Heres what the output will look like when you are on a detached head, it doesnt keep track of history of detached branches so the first result will be the last non detached branch you were at.

  branch1
  branch2
  master
* (HEAD detached at 1d4de8881)
  last-non-detached-head-branch-checked-out

Upvotes: 0

ErikMD
ErikMD

Reputation: 14723

As an alternative to @Kaz's answer, you may want to give a try to git reflog?

Then, git checkout HEAD@{1} for example.

For more details, you can run man gitrevisions or fetch the accompanying online doc. Excerpt:

[…]
<refname>@{<n>}, e.g. master@{1}

A ref followed by the suffix @ with an ordinal specification enclosed in a brace pair (e.g. {1}, {15}) specifies the n-th prior value of that ref. For example master@{1} is the immediate prior value of master while master@{5} is the 5th prior value of master. This suffix may only be used immediately following a ref name and the ref must have an existing log ($GIT_DIR/logs/<refname>).
[…]

Upvotes: 0

Kaz
Kaz

Reputation: 58500

The sure-fire way to get back to the head of a branch is

git checkout <branch-name>  # such as master

You may have to deal with any uncommitted changes first, and if you've made any commits in the detached state you will be warned that you're leaving them behind. You can cherry-pick them into the branch, if they are valuable.

To create an alias for a branch name, you can use a variable in whatever shell you're using:

short="very-long-annoying-branch-name"
git co $short

git symbolic refs don't appear useful for this purpose. Another idea is to create git aliases for checking out specific branches.

Actual transcript:

$ git config --global alias.coms 'checkout master'
$ git coms
Already on 'master'
Your branch is ahead of 'remotes/origin/master' by 7 commits.
  (use "git push" to publish your local commits)

Maybe avoid --global for branch names very specific to particular repos.

Upvotes: 1

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