git-symbolic-ref.html

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 402 </head>
 403 <body>
 404 <div id="header">
 405 <h1>
 406 git-symbolic-ref(1) Manual Page
 407 </h1>
 408 <h2>NAME</h2>
 409 <div class="sectionbody">
 410 <p>git-symbolic-ref -
 411    Read and modify symbolic refs
 412 </p>
 413 </div>
 414 </div>
 415 <h2 id="_synopsis">SYNOPSIS</h2>
 416 <div class="sectionbody">
 417 <div class="verseblock">
 418 <div class="verseblock-content"><em>git symbolic-ref</em> [-q] [-m &lt;reason&gt;] &lt;name&gt; [&lt;ref&gt;]</div>
 419 <div class="verseblock-attribution">
 420 </div></div>
 421 </div>
 422 <h2 id="_description">DESCRIPTION</h2>
 423 <div class="sectionbody">
 424 <div class="paragraph"><p>Given one argument, reads which branch head the given symbolic
 425 ref refers to and outputs its path, relative to the <tt>.git/</tt>
 426 directory.  Typically you would give <tt>HEAD</tt> as the &lt;name&gt;
 427 argument to see which branch your working tree is on.</p></div>
 428 <div class="paragraph"><p>Given two arguments, creates or updates a symbolic ref &lt;name&gt; to
 429 point at the given branch &lt;ref&gt;.</p></div>
 430 <div class="paragraph"><p>A symbolic ref is a regular file that stores a string that
 431 begins with <tt>ref: refs/</tt>.  For example, your <tt>.git/HEAD</tt> is
 432 a regular file whose contents is <tt>ref: refs/heads/master</tt>.</p></div>
 433 </div>
 434 <h2 id="_options">OPTIONS</h2>
 435 <div class="sectionbody">
 436 <div class="dlist"><dl>
 437 <dt class="hdlist1">
 438 -q
 439 </dt>
 440 <dt class="hdlist1">
 441 --quiet
 442 </dt>
 443 <dd>
 444 <p>
 445         Do not issue an error message if the &lt;name&gt; is not a
 446         symbolic ref but a detached HEAD; instead exit with
 447         non-zero status silently.
 448 </p>
 449 </dd>
 450 <dt class="hdlist1">
 451 -m
 452 </dt>
 453 <dd>
 454 <p>
 455         Update the reflog for &lt;name&gt; with &lt;reason&gt;.  This is valid only
 456         when creating or updating a symbolic ref.
 457 </p>
 458 </dd>
 459 </dl></div>
 460 </div>
 461 <h2 id="_notes">NOTES</h2>
 462 <div class="sectionbody">
 463 <div class="paragraph"><p>In the past, <tt>.git/HEAD</tt> was a symbolic link pointing at
 464 <tt>refs/heads/master</tt>.  When we wanted to switch to another branch,
 465 we did <tt>ln -sf refs/heads/newbranch .git/HEAD</tt>, and when we wanted
 466 to find out which branch we are on, we did <tt>readlink .git/HEAD</tt>.
 467 This was fine, and internally that is what still happens by
 468 default, but on platforms that do not have working symlinks,
 469 or that do not have the <tt>readlink(1)</tt> command, this was a bit
 470 cumbersome.  On some platforms, <tt>ln -sf</tt> does not even work as
 471 advertised (horrors).  Therefore symbolic links are now deprecated
 472 and symbolic refs are used by default.</p></div>
 473 <div class="paragraph"><p><em>git symbolic-ref</em> will exit with status 0 if the contents of the
 474 symbolic ref were printed correctly, with status 1 if the requested
 475 name is not a symbolic ref, or 128 if another error occurs.</p></div>
 476 </div>
 477 <h2 id="_git">GIT</h2>
 478 <div class="sectionbody">
 479 <div class="paragraph"><p>Part of the <a href="git.html">git(1)</a> suite</p></div>
 480 </div>
 481 <div id="footer">
 482 <div id="footer-text">
 483 Last updated 2011-07-23 00:49:30 UTC
 484 </div>
 485 </div>
 486 </body>
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