I have a Git repository which contains a bunch of remote branches which no longer exist, but when I try to run git fetch -p I get an error:
error: refs/remotes/origin/bad/branch does not point to a valid object!
I can't find any way to fix this. This branch doesn't exist as a separate file in .git/refs/remotes (or anywhere else; I've searched with find). Trying to delete it with git branch -D doesn't work:
$ git branch -D origin/bad/branch
error: branch 'origin/bad/branch' not found.
$ git branch -D bad/branch
error: branch 'bad/branch' not found.
After comments below I tried adding the -r option to the git branch -D and got this error:
$ git branch -D -r origin/bad/branch
error: Couldn't look up commit object for 'refs/remotes/origin/bad/branch'
Is there some magic plumbing command I can use to get rid of this ref, short of just deleting the entire workspace which I would really prefer not to do?
This command will force-delete a remote-tracking branch:
git branch -D -r origin/bad/branch
But that didn’t work.
When the higher-level commands are too stubborn to do what you want, you might want to try a lower-level command:
git update-ref -d origin/bad/branch
Note that manually editing things is generally not recommended. But it might be necessary. No warranties.
Refs are to my knowledge currently stored[1] in two possible places:
.git/refs.git/packed-refs (file)If it’s a file then origin/bad/branch is stored at
.git/refs/origin/bad/branch. Just deleting that file should be safe.
If it’s a packed ref: open .git/packes-refs. I have not read any
technical documentation for this file format but it just looks like a
file on the form:
hash<space>full ref path<newline>
In which case you might find the ref on a line like:
[hash or some nonsense value?]<space>refs/origin/bad/branch<newline>
I guess you could just delete that line. But first do it in a backup of the whole repository (and working tree) just to be safe.