NAME

git-symbolic-ref - Read, modify and delete symbolic refs

SYNOPSIS

git symbolic-ref [-m <reason>] <name> <ref>
git symbolic-ref [-q] [--short] <name>
git symbolic-ref --delete [-q] <name>

DESCRIPTION

Given one argument, reads which branch head the given symbolicref 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> topoint at the given branch <ref>.

Given —delete and an additional argument, deletes the givensymbolic ref.

A symbolic ref is a regular file that stores a string thatbegins with ref: refs/. For example, your .git/HEAD isa regular file whose contents is ref: refs/heads/master.

OPTIONS

• -d
• —delete

• Delete the symbolic ref .

• -q

• —quiet

• Do not issue an error message if the is not asymbolic ref but a detached HEAD; instead exit withnon-zero status silently.

• —short

• When showing the value of as a symbolic ref, try to shorten thevalue, e.g. from refs/heads/master to master.

• -m

• Update the reflog for with . This is valid onlywhen creating or updating a symbolic ref.

NOTES

In the past, .git/HEAD was a symbolic link pointing atrefs/heads/master. When we wanted to switch to another branch,we did ln -sf refs/heads/newbranch .git/HEAD, and when we wantedto find out which branch we are on, we did readlink .git/HEAD.But symbolic links are not entirely portable, so they are nowdeprecated and symbolic refs (as described above) are used bydefault.

git symbolic-ref will exit with status 0 if the contents of thesymbolic ref were printed correctly, with status 1 if the requestedname is not a symbolic ref, or 128 if another error occurs.

GIT

Part of the git[1] suite