Git – How does Git handle symbolic links

gitsymlinkversion control

If I have a file or directory that is a symbolic link and I commit it to a Git repository, what happens to it?

I would assume that it leaves it as a symbolic link until the file is deleted and then if you pull the file back from an old version it just creates a normal file.

What does it do when I delete the file it references? Does it just commit the dangling link?

Best Answer

Git just stores the contents of the link (i.e. the path of the file system object that it links to) in a 'blob' just like it would for a normal file. It then stores the name, mode and type (including the fact that it is a symlink) in the tree object that represents its containing directory.

When you checkout a tree containing the link, it restores the object as a symlink regardless of whether the target file system object exists or not.

If you delete the file that the symlink references it doesn't affect the Git-controlled symlink in any way. You will have a dangling reference. It is up to the user to either remove or change the link to point to something valid if needed.

Related Solutions

Git – How to discard unstaged changes in Git

For all unstaged files in current working directory use:

git checkout -- .

For a specific file use:

git checkout -- path/to/file/to/revert

-- here to remove ambiguity (this is known as argument disambiguation).

For Git 2.23 onwards, one may want to use the more specific

git restore .

resp.

git restore path/to/file/to/revert

that together with git switch replaces the overloaded git checkout (see here), and thus removes the argument disambiguation.

Git – the difference between ‘git pull’ and ‘git fetch’

In the simplest terms, git pull does a git fetch followed by a git merge.

You can do a git fetch at any time to update your remote-tracking branches under refs/remotes/<remote>/. This operation never changes any of your own local branches under refs/heads, and is safe to do without changing your working copy. I have even heard of people running git fetch periodically in a cron job in the background (although I wouldn't recommend doing this).

A git pull is what you would do to bring a local branch up-to-date with its remote version, while also updating your other remote-tracking branches.

From the Git documentation for git pull:

In its default mode, git pull is shorthand for git fetch followed by git merge FETCH_HEAD.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Git – How to discard unstaged changes in Git

Git – the difference between ‘git pull’ and ‘git fetch’

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