undef/git-commit-vandalism
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De-emphasise the symbolic link documentation.

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The fact that git has previously used symbolic links for representing
symbolic refs doesn't seem relevant to the current function of
git-symbolic-ref.  This patch makes less of a big deal about the
symbolic link history and instead focuses on what git does now.

Signed-off-by: Andy Parkins <andyparkins@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
This commit is contained in:
Andy Parkins 2006-11-30 10:50:28 +00:00 committed by Junio C Hamano
parent 4c81c213a4
commit 22b1c7ee01
1 changed files with 11 additions and 18 deletions
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29
Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt
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@ -19,29 +19,22 @@ argument to see on which branch your working tree is on.
Give two arguments, create or update a symbolic ref <name> to
point at the given branch <ref>.
Traditionally, `.git/HEAD` is a symlink pointing at
`refs/heads/master`. When we want to switch to another branch,
we did `ln -sf refs/heads/newbranch .git/HEAD`, and when we want
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`.
NOTES
-----
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).
A symbolic ref can be a regular file that stores a string that
begins with `ref: refs/`. For example, your `.git/HEAD` *can*
be a regular file whose contents is `ref: refs/heads/master`.
This can be used on a filesystem that does not support symbolic
links. Instead of doing `readlink .git/HEAD`, `git-symbolic-ref
HEAD` can be used to find out which branch we are on. To point
the HEAD to `newbranch`, instead of `ln -sf refs/heads/newbranch
.git/HEAD`, `git-symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/newbranch` can be
used.
Currently, .git/HEAD uses a regular file symbolic ref on Cygwin,
and everywhere else it is implemented as a symlink. This can be
changed at compilation time.
advertised (horrors). Therefore symbolic links are now deprecated
and symbolic refs are used by default.
Author
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