How to handle git gc fatal: bad object refs/remotes/origin/HEAD error?

Question

I randomly hit this today while trying to run Git garbage collect:

$ git gc
fatal: bad object refs/remotes/origin/HEAD
error: failed to run repack


        

Answer 1

I don't understand the ramifications of this, but as suggested in this thread, when I encountered this I just did

$ mv .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD /tmp

(keeping it around just in case) and then

$ git gc

worked without complaining; I haven't run into any problems.

Answer 2

After seeing Trenton’s answer, I looked at my .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD and saw that it was also pointing to an old branch that is now deleted.

But instead of editing the file myself, I tried Ryan’s solution:

git remote set-head origin --auto

It automatically set the file to the new branch, and git gc worked fine after that.