Re: Notation for current branch?

From: Jakub Narębski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 28, 2016, 13:56 UTC
Message-ID: <4114ccbc-6b23-b7fe-ce4a-fcd0c9e4038a@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20160828105159.GA5477@ikke.info>

W dniu 28.08.2016 o 12:51, Kevin Daudt pisze:

> On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 05:58:18PM +0800, ryenus wrote:

>> I wonder if there's an easy to use notation to refer to the current branch?
>> which is expected be friendly to scripting.
>>
>> For HEAD, there's @, which is short and concise.

What's wrong with simply using 'HEAD' for scripting?

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>>
>> But for the current branch, it seems one has to either use a not so friendly
>> plumbing command, or grep/parse the output of `git branch`, since the latter
>> doesn't even has any option to only print the plain name of the current branch,
>> or maybe an option can be added to `git branch`?
> 
> Scripts should always rely on plubming commands, never on porcelain, as
> their output will change, and thus, break scripts.

It is not something theoretical; the output of "git branch" for detached HEAD
(aka anonymous / unnamed branch) did change.

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> To get the current branch name, the best is to use `git rev-parse
> --symbolic-full-name`[1], which either returns you the current branch name
> (eg refs/heads/master), or HEAD, when you have a detached HEAD. If you
> only want the friendly name, add --abbrev-ref, which would then return
> master.
> 
> [1]: git symbolic-ref HEAD would also work, but errors out when you're
> not on a branch.

Note that in some cases current branch is implied, like e.g. in "@{<n>}" notation.

-- 
Jakub Narębski