Why I see 'HEAD detached from' when I git status?

Question

I tried to switch to another commit, so I did : git checkout 031c057 (fourth commit in order)

After I switched back to a06bbac then I did some modification and I did a 'commit'

Now when I git status I see :

$ git status
HEAD detached from a06bbac
nothing to commit, working tree clean

Here my git log :

f24cb85 (HEAD) seconde template
a06bbac (mostafa-test) sc just for test
19c2ad5 (origin/mostafa-test) first sample template
031c057 sc
f6c72a0 make component for table and header
89a0dd3 material-table ready
748ce3b first grid & first table
605562f (master) git ignore fix
1ec70f4 sc
eadfa97 (origin/master, origin/HEAD) Initial commit

How to make it normal ?

Answer 1

HEAD is a special symbolic reference. It's meant to refer to branch heads, not commits directly. When it refers to something that isn't a branch head, we say that HEAD is in a detached state.

After you ran git checkout a06bbac, your Git state resembled

HEAD ----------------> a06bbac ---> 19c2ad5 ---> ...
                         ^
                         |
mostafa-test ------------+

rather than

HEAD ----> mostafa-test --> a06bbac ---> 19c2ad5 ---> ...

As a result, running git commit did not update mostafa-test as it should have.

To fix this, you can simply checkout mostafa-test, then use git reset to fix it.

$ git checkout mostafa-test
$ git reset f24cb85

Answer 2

I think I found It :

First I kept my commit by : `git branch -f mostafa-test HEAD

Then : git checkout mostafa-test

It seems working !

Answer 3

It means HEAD is detached from a branch.

So when come back to a06bbac, use git checkout mostafa-test.

Normally HEAD is on a branch, not commit.