git push: refs/heads/my/subbranch exists, cannot create
I was in a state when I couldn't even fetch because my repo had info about non-existing remote branches I didn't even had checked out. I solved it by running combination (thanks @torek) of:
git branch -r
list local copies of remote branchesgit ls-remote
list remote branchesgit fetch --prune origin
update local copies of remote branches (this actually didn't help me)git remote prune origin
remove info about removed remote branches (this did)
It's not a folder that exists, it's a branch. (Well, there may be a folder/directory involved somewhere—or maybe not, as references get "packed" and stop existing as files within directories.)
- If branch
b
exists, no branch namedb/anything
can be created. - Likewise, if branch
dev/b
exists,dev/b/c
cannot be created.
This is a git internal limitation. In this particular case, remote origin
has a branch named dev/sub
(regardless of whether you have it or not, the important thing is whether the remote has it). In order to create, on origin
, a branch named dev/sub/master
, you must first delete the branch named dev/sub
on origin
:
git push origin :dev/sub
(Of course, deleting this branch may delete something important over there, so be sure you know what you are doing. Generally, you might want to git fetch origin
first, capturing their dev/sub
as your origin/dev/sub
. You can then make a local branch named dev/renamed-sub
pointing to the same commit, create dev/renamed-sub
on the remote, delete the remote dev/sub
, and then create dev/sub/master
on the remote.)
If you can log in on the remote (the system that origin
is hosted on), you can go into the repository over there and simply rename the local dev/sub
branch. (Based on comments below, I suspect that there's a broken auto-deploy script over there as well, which probably should be fixed to only deploy "deployable" branches, rather than everything that gets pushed. But I am just guessing here.)
For me -->
Error =
fatal: cannot lock ref 'refs/heads/release/wl/2.3': 'refs/heads/release/wl'
exists; cannot create 'refs/heads/release/wl/2.3'
Solution =
$~ git update-ref -d refs/heads/release/wl
$~ git checkout release/wl/2.3