Subject: Re: Checkout tag?

From: Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2012 03:30:34 -0800 (PST)

Magnus Bäck <[email-masked]> writes:
> On Sunday, January 22, 2012 at 11:05 CET,
>      Abscissa <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> > I've managed to figure out you switch branches with the checkout
> > command, like this:
> > 
> >   $ git checkout branch_name
> > 
> > Does that work for tags as well? The docs don't seem clear on that.
> > If not, how do you get the working copy to be a specific tag?
> 
> Yes, "git checkout" works for branches, tags, commit SHA-1s, and
> anything else that can be resolved to a SHA-1 identifying what to
> check out. [...]

Note however that because you can generate new commits only on top of
local branches (refs/heads/*), if you check out something other than
local branch, e.g.:

  $ git checkout v1.7.8
  $ git checkout origin/next
  $ git checkout HEAD^

you would be after such checkout in unnamed anonymous branch which
contents corresponds to what you checked out.  This state is called
'detached HEAD', and shows e.g. in "git branch output as

  $ git branch
  * (no branch)
  master
  ...

On the other hand if you don't want to checkout tag to explore it, but
set contents of working area to the state it was in given tag, you can
use

  $ git checkout v1.7.8 -- .

HTH

P.S. Instead of Nabble you can use GMane interface, or just use email
(you don't have ot be subscribed to [email-masked] to post, and
it is custom here to send replies also to author(s)).

-- 
Jakub Narebski