GIT-UPDATE-REF(1)						    Git Manual							 GIT-UPDATE-REF(1)

NAME

       git-update-ref - Update the object name stored in a ref safely

SYNOPSIS

       git update-ref [-m <reason>] (-d <ref> [<oldvalue>] | [--no-deref] <ref> <newvalue> [<oldvalue>])

DESCRIPTION

       Given two arguments, stores the <newvalue> in the <ref>, possibly dereferencing the symbolic refs. E.g. git update-ref HEAD <newvalue>
       updates the current branch head to the new object.

       Given three arguments, stores the <newvalue> in the <ref>, possibly dereferencing the symbolic refs, after verifying that the current value
       of the <ref> matches <oldvalue>. E.g. git update-ref refs/heads/master <newvalue> <oldvalue> updates the master branch head to <newvalue>
       only if its current value is <oldvalue>. You can specify 40 "0" or an empty string as <oldvalue> to make sure that the ref you are creating
       does not exist.

       It also allows a "ref" file to be a symbolic pointer to another ref file by starting with the four-byte header sequence of "ref:".

       More importantly, it allows the update of a ref file to follow these symbolic pointers, whether they are symlinks or these "regular file
       symbolic refs". It follows real symlinks only if they start with "refs/": otherwise it will just try to read them and update them as a
       regular file (i.e. it will allow the filesystem to follow them, but will overwrite such a symlink to somewhere else with a regular
       filename).

       If --no-deref is given, <ref> itself is overwritten, rather than the result of following the symbolic pointers.

       In general, using

	   git update-ref HEAD "$head"

       should be a lot safer than doing

	   echo "$head" > "$GIT_DIR/HEAD"

       both from a symlink following standpoint and an error checking standpoint. The "refs/" rule for symlinks means that symlinks that point to
       "outside" the tree are safe: they'll be followed for reading but not for writing (so we'll never write through a ref symlink to some other
       tree, if you have copied a whole archive by creating a symlink tree).

       With -d flag, it deletes the named <ref> after verifying it still contains <oldvalue>.

LOGGING UPDATES

       If config parameter "core.logAllRefUpdates" is true or the file "$GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>" exists then git update-ref will append a line to the
       log file "$GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>" (dereferencing all symbolic refs before creating the log name) describing the change in ref value. Log lines
       are formatted as:

	1. oldsha1 SP newsha1 SP committer LF

	   Where "oldsha1" is the 40 character hexadecimal value previously stored in <ref>, "newsha1" is the 40 character hexadecimal value of
	   <newvalue> and "committer" is the committer's name, email address and date in the standard GIT committer ident format.

       Optionally with -m:

	1. oldsha1 SP newsha1 SP committer TAB message LF

	   Where all fields are as described above and "message" is the value supplied to the -m option.

       An update will fail (without changing <ref>) if the current user is unable to create a new log file, append to the existing log file or
       does not have committer information available.

AUTHOR

       Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org[1]>.

GIT

       Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES

	1. torvalds@osdl.org
	   mailto:torvalds@osdl.org

Git 1.7.1							    07/05/2010							 GIT-UPDATE-REF(1)