Lesson 02 of 06Concept

Understanding HEAD

Goal: Know what HEAD is and how it moves when you commit and switch branches.

"You are here"

With several branches, Git needs to know which one you are working on. That is HEAD: a pointer to your current branch.

HEAD points at a branch, and the branch points at a commit. So HEAD also tells Git which commit your working tree is based on.

HEAD ──▶ main ──▶ ● Add styles
                  │
                  ● Add homepage
                  │
                  ● Initial commit

git status reports this as On branch main.

Follow HEAD

Step 1 of 4

HEAD is on main. A second branch, feature/login, points at the same commit.

$ git log --oneline

4b7d2e1 (HEAD -> main, feature/login) Add homepage
a3f0c47 Initial commit

HEAD -> main means HEAD points to main. feature/login points at the same commit. In the GitDojo graph, HEAD is the blue label.