From: Michael Haggerty Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2011 15:20:16 +0000 (+0100) Subject: git symbolic-ref: documentation fix X-Git-Tag: v1.7.7.5~6 X-Git-Url: https://git.tokkee.org/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=a8d05d72b9fd60fe63f249250dcab2352b7b1984;p=git.git git symbolic-ref: documentation fix The old "git symbolic-ref" manpage seemed to imply in one place that symlinks are still the default way to represent symbolic references and in another that symlinks are deprecated. Fix the text and shorten the justification for the change of implementation. Signed-off-by: Michael Haggerty Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano --- diff --git a/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt b/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt index 75b1ae506..a45d4c4f2 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