git-symbolic-ref(1) — Linux manual page

GIT-SYMBOLIC-REF(1)            Git Manual            GIT-SYMBOLIC-REF(1)

NAME

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

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/master to master.

       --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-recurse stops
           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

COLOPHON

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2024-06-14.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2024-06-12.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Git 2.45.2.492.gd63586         2024-06-12            GIT-SYMBOLIC-REF(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1), gitglossary(7)

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