# "fatal: reference is not a tree:" on git checkout 2 messages from 2013-07-26 to 2013-07-26. Participants: David Abdurachmanov, Duy Nguyen. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/34541 ## David Abdurachmanov, 2013-07-26 09:52 Subject: "fatal: reference is not a tree:" on git checkout Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CC257523-1C84-4F73-9AB0-D1B5A5ECDC45%40gmail.com ``` Hi, Reproduce: $ git clone https://github.com/cms-sw/cmsdist.git $ git branch -a | grep devel-gcc48 remotes/origin/IB/CMSSW_7_0_X/devel-gcc48 $ git checkout IB/CMSSW_7_0_X/devel-gcc48 fatal: reference is not a tree: IB/CMSSW_7_0_X/devel-gcc48 It has stopped to work with the last pull request. All the references on Google talk about submodules, which I don't use. Any ideas what could be causing this issue? You can get into detached state by: $ git checkout origin/IB/CMSSW_7_0_X/devel-gcc48 You also can checkout a branch by doing: $ git clone -b IB/CMSSW_7_0_X/devel-gcc48 https://github.com/cms-sw/cmsdist.git $ git branch * IB/CMSSW_7_0_X/devel-gcc48 Thanks, david ``` ## Duy Nguyen, 2013-07-26 11:46 Subject: Re: "fatal: reference is not a tree:" on git checkout Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CACsJy8BWnrH2J%2BBhG09BpfzMUFw%3D-XirP7EAa3QKuXtbvQr18Q%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: ``` On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 4:52 PM, David Abdurachmanov wrote: > Hi, > > Reproduce: > > $ git clone https://github.com/cms-sw/cmsdist.git > $ git branch -a | grep devel-gcc48 > remotes/origin/IB/CMSSW_7_0_X/devel-gcc48 > $ git checkout IB/CMSSW_7_0_X/devel-gcc48 > fatal: reference is not a tree: IB/CMSSW_7_0_X/devel-gcc48 > > It has stopped to work with the last pull request. All the references on Google > talk about submodules, which I don't use. Any ideas what could be causing this > issue? "Bad" naming. It interprets the branch name as something-gHEX like the output from git-describe. Coincidently "cc48" is an umambiguous short sha-1. check_tracking_name, which prefix "origin/" in, never has a chance to run. We should probably check in get_describe_name() that the returned value is a commit or a tag, but that doesn't really solve the problem. I think check_tracking_name should have higher priority than get_describe_name().. -- Duy ```