diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt | 9 |
1 files changed, 3 insertions, 6 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt b/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt index 75b1ae5061..a45d4c4f29 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt @@ -43,12 +43,9 @@ 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`. -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 `readlink(1)` command, this was a bit -cumbersome. On some platforms, `ln -sf` does not even work as -advertised (horrors). Therefore symbolic links are now deprecated -and symbolic refs are used by default. +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 |