Git - Head (Head Branch | Branch Head) / Last commit

About

The head is the last commit of a branch.
while the HEAD (in uppercase) is the head of the current branch (active branch).

This article is about the head, for the HEAD branch see the current branch page.

Example

In the example below, the branch head of:

the branch A is the commit CA3
the branch B is the commit CB2

CA1--CA2--CA3 <-- Branch A
            /
 CM1--CM2--CM3 <-- master
            \
             CB1--CB2 <-- Branch B

Management

Detached

Detached head means you are no longer on a branch, you have checked out a single commit in the history

Resolution:

git checkout master
git checkout yourBranch

Show

Local branch

With the log

git log -n 1 [branch_name]

Get

with rev-parse

git rev-parse HEAD

List

Local value

local: head of the branchs are stored in the git directory in the log directory

ls .git/logs/refs/heads

master  
branch-a
branch-b

remote value

git ls-remote --heads remote

dd39a644a4a7ec3e65135baaf48acd5f7f628510        refs/heads/master
6ead0945771dfd789aa97442ff10872f9665598d        refs/heads/stable
e245797039fa7b86c3a3fb32b45cfb998d8c76cd        refs/heads/v1.13

Reset / revert

Reset, revert to the head commit of the upstream branch

git reset --hard upstream/master