Git How to return from detached HEAD state

Question

If one would checkout a branch   git checkout 760ac7e   from e g  b9ac70b  how can one go back to the last known head b9ac70b without knowing its SHA1

User · Answer

You may have made some new commits in the detached HEAD state. I believe if you do as other answers advise:

git checkout master
# or
git checkout -

then you may lose your commits!! Instead, you may want to do this:

# you are currently in detached HEAD state
git checkout -b commits-from-detached-head

and then merge commits-from-detached-head into whatever branch you want, so you don't lose the commits.

User · Answer

I had this edge case  where I checked out a previous version of the code in which my file directory structure was different   git checkout 1 87 1                                     warning  unable to unlink web sites default default settings php  Permission denied     other warnings     Note  checking out  1 87 1    You are in  detached HEAD  state  You can look around  make experimental changes and commit them  and you can discard any commits you make in this state without impacting any branches by performing another checkout   If you want to create a new branch to retain commits you create  you may do so  now or later  by using -b with the checkout command again   Example     git checkout -b  lt new-branch-name gt   HEAD is now at 50a7153d7    Merge branch  hotfix 1 87 1    In a case like this you may need to use --force  when you know that going back to the original branch and discarding changes is a safe thing to do    git checkout master did not work     git checkout master error  The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by checkout  web sites default default settings php     other files       git checkout master --force  or git checkout master -f  worked   git checkout master -f Previous HEAD position was 50a7153d7    Merge branch  hotfix 1 87 1  Switched to branch  master  Your branch is up-to-date with  origin master

User · Answer

If you remember which branch was checked out before  e g  master  you could simply  git checkout master   to get out of detached HEAD state   Generally speaking  git checkout  lt branchname gt  will get you out of that   If you don t remember the last branch name  try  git checkout -   This also tries to check out your last checked out branch

User · Answer

Use git reflog to find the hashes of previously checked out commits   A shortcut command to get to your last checked out branch  not sure if this work correctly with detached HEAD and intermediate commits though  is git checkout -

[git] Git: How to return from 'detached HEAD' state

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