Jakub Narębski <jnareb@xxxxxxxxx> 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).