diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt | 26 |
1 files changed, 18 insertions, 8 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt b/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt index 75b1ae5061..ef68ad2b71 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt @@ -3,12 +3,14 @@ git-symbolic-ref(1) NAME ---- -git-symbolic-ref - Read and modify symbolic refs +git-symbolic-ref - Read, modify and delete symbolic refs SYNOPSIS -------- [verse] -'git symbolic-ref' [-q] [-m <reason>] <name> [<ref>] +'git symbolic-ref' [-m <reason>] <name> <ref> +'git symbolic-ref' [-q] [--short] <name> +'git symbolic-ref' --delete [-q] <name> DESCRIPTION ----------- @@ -20,6 +22,9 @@ 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 contents is `ref: refs/heads/master`. @@ -27,12 +32,20 @@ a regular file whose contents 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`. + -m:: Update the reflog for <name> with <reason>. This is valid only when creating or updating a symbolic ref. @@ -43,12 +56,9 @@ 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 |