From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2016 16:37:08 GMT
Subject: Re: v2.9.3 and v2.10.0: `name-ref' HEAD gives wrong branch name
Message-ID: <xmqq8tulb45n.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <b1d35732-4b4c-e0c1-59da-44d3e3b28799@gmail.com>

Jakub Narębski <jnareb@gmail.com> writes:

>> Have you tried "git symbolic-ref HEAD"?
>> 
>> $ git symbolic-ref HEAD
>> refs/heads/master
>> 
>> If you don't want the fully-qualified ref, you can add --short:
>> 
>> $ git symbolic-ref --short HEAD
>> master
>
> This does not work for detached HEAD, but perhaps you don't need
> to worry about this.

I am not sure what you mean by "does not work".  Asking what ref
HEAD points at to symbolic-ref will tell you it does not point at
anything by exiting with non-zero status and that can be relied
upon.

Asking "symbolic-ref HEAD" has been the way how "git branch" and
other commands find out what branch is currently checked out for
almost eternity ("git symbolic-ref" appeared in Git v0.99.8).