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-rw-r--r--Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt9
1 files changed, 3 insertions, 6 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt b/Documentation/git-symbolic-ref.txt
index 75b1ae5..a45d4c4 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