Since references may be packed, it's no longer as helpful to
introduce references as paths relative to .git.
Signed-off-by: "J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@citi.umich.edu>
@ -506,41 +506,33 @@ Note that the name "origin" is just the name that git uses by default
@@ -506,41 +506,33 @@ Note that the name "origin" is just the name that git uses by default
to refer to the repository that you cloned from.
[[how-git-stores-references]]
How git stores references
-------------------------
Naming branches, tags, and other references
-------------------------------------------
Branches, remote-tracking branches, and tags are all references to
commits. Git stores these references in the ".git" directory. Most
of them are stored in .git/refs/:
- branches are stored in .git/refs/heads
- tags are stored in .git/refs/tags
- remote-tracking branches for "origin" are stored in
.git/refs/remotes/origin/
commits. All references are named with a slash-separated path name
starting with "refs"; the names we've been using so far are actually
shorthand:
If you look at one of these files you will see that they usually
contain just the SHA1 id of a commit:
- The branch "test" is short for "refs/heads/test".
- The tag "v2.6.18" is short for "refs/tags/v2.6.18".
- "origin/master" is short for "refs/remotes/origin/master".
------------------------------------------------
$ ls .git/refs/heads/
master
$ cat .git/refs/heads/master
c0f982dcf188d55db9d932a39d4ea7becaa55fed
------------------------------------------------
The full name is occasionally useful if, for example, there ever
exists a tag and a branch with the same name.
You can refer to a reference by its path relative to the .git
directory. However, we've seen above that git will also accept
shorter names; for example, "master" is an acceptable shortcut for
"refs/heads/master", and "origin/master" is a shortcut for
"refs/remotes/origin/master".
As another useful shortcut, if the repository "origin" posesses only
a single branch, you can refer to that branch as just "origin".
As another useful shortcut, you can also refer to the "HEAD" of
"origin" (or any other remote), using just the name of the remote.
More generally, if you have defined a remote repository named
"example", you can refer to the branch in that repository as
"example". And for a repository with multiple branches, this will
refer to the branch designated as the "HEAD" branch.
For the complete list of paths which git checks for references, and
how it decides which to choose when there are multiple references
with the same name, see the "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section of
gitlink:git-rev-parse[1].
the order it uses to decide which to choose when there are multiple
references with the same shorthand name, see the "SPECIFYING
J. Bruce Fields
18 years ago