Re: could not pull anymore, needed to delete a ref

[Gavin Smith]

On Sun, Mar 26, 2023 at 09:29:11PM +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> When I did a git pull --rebase, I got:
> 
> error: cannot lock ref 'refs/remotes/origin/experimental/texindex-unicode': 
> 'refs/remotes/origin/experimental' exists; cannot create 
> 'refs/remotes/origin/experimental/texindex-unicode'
> From git.savannah.gnu.org:/srv/git/texinfo
>  ! [new branch]            experimental/texindex-unicode -> 
> origin/experimental/texindex-unicode  (unable to update local ref)
> 
> A quick search made do
> $ git update-ref -d refs/remotes/origin/experimental
> 
> And then I could pull.  I do not know if there is something specific
> with my situation, maybe it is because I did a branch once.  If it is
> not specific to me, maybe we could say something on the list?

CC'ing list in case others have the same problem.

I renamed a remote branch from "texindex-unicode" to
"experimental/texindex-unicode".  This appears to
have clashed with a branch called "experimental", which did not
exist any more on origin but must have existed in the past and you
had a record it existed in your local repository.

You can update the list of remote branches with
"git remote update origin --prune".