Re: error: src refspec refs/heads/master matches more than one.

From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
Date: Feb 14, 2014, 16:52 UTC
Message-ID: <87d2ip3ac9.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqy51dirjs.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 24 quoted lines

> Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 7:45 PM, Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> wrote:
>>> Josef Wolf <jw@raven.inka.de> writes:
>>>
>>>> Notice the refs/heads _within_ refs/heads!
>>>>
>>>> Now I wonder how I managed to get into this situation and what's the best way
>>>> to recover?
>>>
>>> Probably you did something like "git branch refs/heads/master".  You can
>>> remove it again with "git branch -d refs/heads/master".
>>
>> As a porcelain, "git branch" should prevent (or at least warn) users
>> from creating such refs, I think.
>
> "warn", possibly, but I do not see a reason to *prevent*.
>
>  A. You are not allowed to call your branch with a string that begins with
>     'refs/heads/'.
>  B. Why?
>  A. Because it will confuse you.
>  B. I know what I am doing.
>  A. ???

A. But maybe Git will no longer know what you are doing. Its standard way of resolving references will mean that once a branch refs/heads/wibble exists, referring to a branch wibble will become extra hard. For example, stuff like

push origin HEAD:refs/heads/wibble

will maybe create or update a new branch wibble, or maybe it will just push to the existing branch refs/heads/wibble.

-- 
David Kastrup