Pushing to a remote branch (failed to update ref)

Question

I have a remote repository with a feature/initital-change branch. Now I want to push some files to this remote branch from my local feature/initital-change branch.

I wen

Answer 1

This can happen when two branches are created, one with a slash / and one without a slash, where the branch without the slash is the prefix of the other branch.

Example

Consider these two valid branch names:

• feature
• feature/initial-change

When you fetch these branches from the remote to your local machine the feature branch is represented as a file and the feature/initial-change branches is represented as a directory named feature and a file named initial-change. Your OS cannot create a file and directory of the same name:

• logs/refs/heads/feature
• logs/refs/heads/feature/initial-change

Workaround

The workaround would be to delete the feature branch in this case:

git push --force origin :feature