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How to Solve "HEAD detached at origin master

Problem Description: There are multiple remote repositories locally. One day, when you need to push to one of them, the following prompt appears:

HEAD detached at origin_game/maste

Conclusion: The meaning of the above prompt is that the commit you are making does not belong to a branch.

This is an official explanation. To better understand this statement, we need to know what HEAD is.

The HEAD file is usually a symbolic reference, pointing to the currently active branch. A symbolic reference means it is a pointer that points to other references.

Normally, the HEAD should be in the following state. If yours is different, then you need to fix the detached HEAD.

$ cat.git/HEAD
ref: refs/heads/master

Fixing the Detached HEAD​

If for some reason the HEAD points to a commit that does not belong to a branch, you need to create a temporary branch and let this branch point to the commit that the detached HEAD is currently pointing to:

# Because the remote repository for this commit is origin_game, so you need to switch to this branch.
# git checkout origin_game/master

# Create a temporary branch on this branch.
$ git checkout -b temp_branch

The purpose of this is to reconnect our HEAD to the temporary branch temp_branch.

Next, we can use some commands to check if it meets our expectations.

# Compare the historical commits of the remote branch and the temporary branch.
$ git log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit master origin/master temp_branch

# Compare the specific differences between the master branch and the temporary branch.
$ git diff master temp_branch

# Compare the specific differences between the remote branch and the temporary branch.
$ git diff origin/master temp_branch

Point the HEAD of the temporary branch to master.

# The temporary branch will be used to determine where the `HEAD` of the master branch should point.
$ git branch -f master temp_branch

# Switch back to the master branch.
$ git checkout master

# The above two commands can be abbreviated as
$ git checkout -B master temp_branch

At this point, the master branch is consistent with origin_game/master, so the temporary branch can be deleted.

$ git branch -d temp_branch

Finally, update the remote repository on the master branch.

# Merge the feature branch.
$ git merge fire_bug

$ git push origin_game/master

Since then, the detached HEAD can be successfully fixed.

Note:

  • You cannot make commits on the origin/master branch. Commits can only be made on the master branch.
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