Detached Heads

Learn how you can switch between different commits either in the same branch or across branches.

We'll cover the following

Sometimes when using Git you might have seen something like this:

	git status
	HEAD detached at 76d43b6

Detaching

The HEAD pointer can be moved to an arbitrary point. In fact, git checkout does exactly this. You can specify a reference (like master or newfeature) or a specific commit ID.

The next set of commands will check out the repository at a particular commit:

1	mkdir lgthw_git_branch_2
2	cd lgthw_git_branch_2
3	git clone https://github.com/ianmiell/shutit.git
4	cd shutit
5	git log

After running the above commands, you will see the log output in the terminal. Hit q to exit the log output, and then run the following command to point the HEAD pointer to a specific commit:

6	git checkout e36355ed00ac3af009d7113a9dd281c269a79afd