git-symbolic-ref - Man Page

• Store a reference by a name: git symbolic-ref refs/name ref
• Store a reference by name, including a message with a reason for the update: git symbolic-ref -m "message" refs/name refs/heads/branch_name
• Read a reference by name: git symbolic-ref refs/name
• Delete a reference by name: git symbolic-ref --delete refs/name
• For scripting, hide errors with --quiet and use --short to simplify ("refs/heads/X" prints as "X"): git symbolic-ref --quiet --short refs/name

tldr.sh

git symbolic-ref [-m <reason>] <name> <ref>
git symbolic-ref [-q] [--short] [--no-recurse] <name>
git symbolic-ref --delete [-q] <name>

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.

-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.

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.

Part of the git(1) suite

git(1), gitglossary(7).