diff --git a/bin/bbrelease b/bin/bbrelease
index 90cb72b625e..6120e370e46 100755
--- a/bin/bbrelease
+++ b/bin/bbrelease
@@ -239,7 +239,7 @@ if [ X$revmode = Xyes ]; then
     # Copy old version of config/lt_vers.am, since it's hard to
     # "undo" changes to it.
     cp config/lt_vers.am $tmpdir
-    branch=`git branch | grep '*' | awk '{print $NF}'`
+    branch=`git symbolic-ref -q --short HEAD`
     revision=`git rev-parse --short HEAD`
     # Set version information to m.n.r-r$revision.
     # (h5vers does not correctly handle just m.n.r-$today.)