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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt | 18 |
1 files changed, 6 insertions, 12 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt b/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt index 6392538807..a45d4c4f29 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt @@ -7,6 +7,7 @@ git-symbolic-ref - Read and modify symbolic refs SYNOPSIS -------- +[verse] 'git symbolic-ref' [-q] [-m <reason>] <name> [<ref>] DESCRIPTION @@ -42,21 +43,14 @@ 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. - -'git-symbolic-ref' will exit with status 0 if the contents of the +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. -Author ------- -Written by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> - GIT --- Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite |