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Detached head

A detached HEAD is a Git state where HEAD points directly to a specific commit instead of pointing to a branch reference.

  • Normal state
git checkout branch

HEAD -> main -> commit abc123
HEAD points to main, which points to a commit.
  • Detached HEAD:
git checkout commitid

HEAD -> commit abc123
HEAD points directly to a commit, not through a branch.

Notes

  • CI/CD pipelines often checkout specific commits (like GitLab does with git checkout 35ff590b)

  • If you want to push the branch, you can get this error

error: src refspec MYBRANCH does not match any
error: failed to push some refs to 'MYREPO'

This is because git looks for a local branch named MYBRANCH to push. In detached HEAD state, there's no local main branch reference, so it fails.

Solution: Using git push origin HEAD:MYBRANCH pushes whatever HEAD points to (the commit) directly to the remote main branch