SYNOPSIS
git symbolic-ref [-m <reason>] <name> <ref> git symbolic-ref [-q] [--short] [--no-recurse] <name> git symbolic-ref --delete [-q] <name>
DESCRIPTION
Given one argument, reads which branch head the given symbolic
ref refers to and outputs its path, relative to the .git/
directory. Typically you would give HEAD as the <name>
argument to see which branch your working tree is on.
Given two arguments, creates or updates a symbolic ref <name> to point at the given branch <ref>.
Given --delete and an additional argument, deletes the given
symbolic ref.
A symbolic ref is a regular file that stores a string that
begins with ref: refs/. For example, your .git/HEAD is
a regular file whose content is ref: refs/heads/master.
OPTIONS
- -d
- --delete
-
Delete the symbolic ref <name>.
- -q
- --quiet
-
Do not issue an error message if the <name> is not a symbolic ref but a detached HEAD; instead exit with non-zero status silently.
- --short
-
When showing the value of <name> as a symbolic ref, try to shorten the value, e.g. from
refs/heads/mastertomaster. - --recurse
- --no-recurse
-
When showing the value of <name> as a symbolic ref, if <name> refers to another symbolic ref, follow such a chain of symbolic refs until the result no longer points at a symbolic ref (
--recurse, which is the default).--no-recursestops after dereferencing only a single level of symbolic ref. - -m
-
Update the reflog for <name> with <reason>. This is valid only when creating or updating a symbolic ref.
NOTES
In the past, .git/HEAD was a symbolic link pointing at
refs/heads/master. When we wanted to switch to another branch,
we did ln -sf refs/heads/newbranch .git/HEAD, and when we wanted
to find out which branch we are on, we did readlink .git/HEAD.
But symbolic links are not entirely portable, so they are now
deprecated and symbolic refs (as described above) are used by
default.
git symbolic-ref will exit with status 0 if the contents of the symbolic ref were printed correctly, with status 1 if the requested name is not a symbolic ref, or 128 if another error occurs.
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite