How do I tell on GIT whether a reference is a branch or a tag?

Question

How do I tell, given an arbitrary reference, whether it is a branch, a tag or something else?

Answer 1

First, you fully expand the ref:

git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name v1.9-rc2

...where v1.9-rc2 is the ref I care about. That gives me the full reframe refs/tags/v1.9-rc2. Tags start with refs/tags, branches start with refs/heads.