Switching the active branch in a bare git repository

If you ever need to delete the “active” branch in a git repository, you need to first switch the active branch. Because you cannot delete the branch you are sitting on… You cannot checkout a branch, as you would usually do. You have to change the symbolic reference called HEAD. You can do this with the symbolic-ref command:

$ git branch
* deletethis
somebranch
$ git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/somebranch
$ git branch
deletethis
* somebranch
$ git branch -d deletethis

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