git-svn clone fails "fatal: Not a valid object name"

The tag on SVN has a space in it, but the tag in git had this space converted to %20 (URL encoded). To solve it just manually add a new tag with the verbatim name:

cd .git/refs/remotes/tags/
mv Sync%20Controllers Sync\ Controllers

Then run the git svn clone command again.

(Normally you'd do this with git tag OLDTAG NEWTAG but git was not allowing me to define a tag with a space in. The tag files are simply text files containing the hash of the relevant commit.)

I ran into this issue today, and considered this branch which contains a pace in it is not important, i just run

git branch -r -d partialPayment%202.4

And re-run git svn fetch It skipped current branch and continue grabbing the next one.

You may use git-svn server-side alternative, SubGit in order to avoid many of git-svn translation problems.

I'm a SubGit developer and could say that we worked a lot to resolve character translation issues like the one above; in this particular case tag would be translated to a refs/tags/Sync+Controllers tag.

Note also, that git-svn has translated Subversion tag as a branch instead of a tag.