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<div id="header">
<h1>
git-symbolic-ref(1) Manual Page
</h1>
<h2>NAME</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<p>git-symbolic-ref -
Read and modify symbolic refs
</p>
</div>
</div>
<h2 id="_synopsis">SYNOPSIS</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph"><p><em>git symbolic-ref</em> [-q] [-m <reason>] <name> [<ref>]</p></div>
</div>
<h2 id="_description">DESCRIPTION</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph"><p>Given one argument, reads which branch head the given symbolic
ref refers to and outputs its path, relative to the <tt>.git/</tt>
directory. Typically you would give <tt>HEAD</tt> as the <name>
argument to see which branch your working tree is on.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Given two arguments, creates or updates a symbolic ref <name> to
point at the given branch <ref>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>A symbolic ref is a regular file that stores a string that
begins with <tt>ref: refs/</tt>. For example, your <tt>.git/HEAD</tt> is
a regular file whose contents is <tt>ref: refs/heads/master</tt>.</p></div>
</div>
<h2 id="_options">OPTIONS</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="dlist"><dl>
<dt class="hdlist1">
-q
</dt>
<dt class="hdlist1">
--quiet
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
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.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
-m
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
Update the reflog for <name> with <reason>. This is valid only
when creating or updating a symbolic ref.
</p>
</dd>
</dl></div>
</div>
<h2 id="_notes">NOTES</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph"><p>In the past, <tt>.git/HEAD</tt> was a symbolic link pointing at
<tt>refs/heads/master</tt>. When we wanted to switch to another branch,
we did <tt>ln -sf refs/heads/newbranch .git/HEAD</tt>, and when we wanted
to find out which branch we are on, we did <tt>readlink .git/HEAD</tt>.
This was fine, and internally that is what still happens by
default, but on platforms that do not have working symlinks,
or that do not have the <tt>readlink(1)</tt> command, this was a bit
cumbersome. On some platforms, <tt>ln -sf</tt> does not even work as
advertised (horrors). Therefore symbolic links are now deprecated
and symbolic refs are used by default.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><em>git symbolic-ref</em> 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.</p></div>
</div>
<h2 id="_git">GIT</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph"><p>Part of the <a href="git.html">git(1)</a> suite</p></div>
</div>
<div id="footer">
<div id="footer-text">
Last updated 2011-04-19 22:26:58 UTC
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