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Yes, this another thing doesn't get said enough to a beginner: A branch is nothing more than a pointer (or mark) to a commit. This realisation along with the

by sakisv 4y ago

Yes, this another thing doesn't get said enough to a beginner: A branch is nothing more than a pointer (or mark) to a commit. This realisation along with the `git reflog` command I wrote above, made for a tremendous mental shift and suddenly almost everything around git just clicked together.

Galanwe 4y ago
> A branch is nothing more than a pointer (or mark) to a commit. A tag is. A branch has the additional feature that it's a moving target with new commits, which is maybe not what you want in OP's case.
- deleted 4y ago
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mook 4y ago
> A branch is nothing more than a pointer (or mark) to a commit. Yep; the way I like to phrase it is "symlink". As in, .git/refs/heads literally contained symlinks in it pointing to commits. (It doesn't anymore because Windows.)
seba_dos1 4y ago
This (along with the fact that a commit is a state, not a patch) is really the most basic thing that every git tutorial should start with and you shouldn't move anywhere past that until you grasp it. But what you usually get instead is "this is a command to commit, this is a command to push, and this one to pull, here's how you make a branch, have fun" - and then people complain that git is complicated because they end up with situations they don't understand. Well, duh - any new concept seems complicated until you take a closer look at it, and if you learn git this way you never actually did try to understand it. It's a data structure manipulation tool, so it's in your best interest to have at least some rough understanding of what data structure it operates on. Otherwise it's like trying to use a word processor without knowing how to write. As another example, I find it completely backwards to teach `git pull` before `git fetch <remote> <ref>:<local_ref>`. How is one supposed to understand what `pull` does this way? However you imagine it at this stage, it's going to be wrong and will make you end up confused later on. Once you know how fetch works and what merge is, `git pull` becomes obvious. It doesn't work the other way around.

by sakisv 4y ago

Galanwe 4y ago

> A branch is nothing more than a pointer (or mark) to a commit. A tag is. A branch has the additional feature that it's a moving target with new commits, which is maybe not what you want in OP's case.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

mook 4y ago

> A branch is nothing more than a pointer (or mark) to a commit. Yep; the way I like to phrase it is "symlink". As in, .git/refs/heads literally contained symlinks in it pointing to commits. (It doesn't anymore because Windows.)

seba_dos1 4y ago

This (along with the fact that a commit is a state, not a patch) is really the most basic thing that every git tutorial should start with and you shouldn't move anywhere past that until you grasp it. But what you usually get instead is "this is a command to commit, this is a command to push, and this one to pull, here's how you make a branch, have fun" - and then people complain that git is complicated because they end up with situations they don't understand. Well, duh - any new concept seems complicated until you take a closer look at it, and if you learn git this way you never actually did try to understand it. It's a data structure manipulation tool, so it's in your best interest to have at least some rough understanding of what data structure it operates on. Otherwise it's like trying to use a word processor without knowing how to write. As another example, I find it completely backwards to teach `git pull` before `git fetch <remote> <ref>:<local_ref>`. How is one supposed to understand what `pull` does this way? However you imagine it at this stage, it's going to be wrong and will make you end up confused later on. Once you know how fetch works and what merge is, `git pull` becomes obvious. It doesn't work the other way around.