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As a result of all this, anytime you checkout a commit, even if that commit was the latest commit of your main branch, you're still in a detached HEAD because your HEAD is not pointing to any branches. Hence even checking out a tag will put you in a detached HEAD

As a result of all this, anytime you checkout a commit (without using the branch name to checkout), even if that commit was the latest commit of your main branch, you're still in a detached HEAD because your HEAD is not pointing to any of your local branches. Hence even checking out a tag will put you in a detached HEAD. To add onto that, even checking out a remote branch that you have fetched into your computer would result in a detached head ie git checkout origin main would also end up as a detached head...

Summary

All of the following will cause detached head:

• checkout any commit
• checkout any tag
• checkout any remote branch

You're only on an attached head, if you've checked out a local branch

Then if you do cat refs/heads/Your-current-branch-name then you'd also see the commit that your branch is pointing/referencing to.

As a result of all this, anytime you checkout a commit, even if that commit was the latest commit of your main branch, you're still in a detached HEAD because your HEAD is not pointing to any branches. Hence even checking out a tag is will put you in a detached HEAD

Then if you do cat refs/heads/Your-current-branch-name then you'd also see the SHA of the commit that your branch is pointing/referencing to.

As a result of all this, anytime you checkout a commit, even if that commit was the latest commit of your main branch, you're still in a detached HEAD because your HEAD is not pointing to any branches. Hence even checking out a tag will put you in a detached HEAD

ref: refs/heads/Your-branch-name

However if you were on a detached HEAD you and cat .git/HEAD you'd just get the SHA and nothing more:

ref: refs/heads/Your-current-branch-name

Then if you do cat refs/heads/Your-current-branch-name then you'd also see the commit that your branch is pointing/referencing to.

However if you were on a detached HEAD you and cat .git/HEAD you'd just get the SHA of the commit and nothing more:

By nothing more I mean the head isn't pointing to any branch. It's just directly pointing to a commit.