在Git中删除名称无效的分支

Question

I've been using Dropbox to keep my source folder synced between two computers. This folder contains my source-code which I version handle with Git.

it seems that there was a file conflict and when I did a push, my Git client, pushed an invalid branch to the remote. The branch name is rel_1 (Mridang-PC's conflicted copy 2011-09-16).0-alpha2 . I need to delete this branch but an unable to do so. Ad you can see the name has spaces and single-quote too.

When I try and check out the branch by running: git checkout "rel_1 (Mridang-PC's conflicted copy 2011-09-16).0-alpha2" . I get an error saying: fatal: git checkout: we do not like 'rel_1 (Mridang-PC's conflicted copy 2011-09-16).0-alpha2' as a branch name.

Is there a way I can fix this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Look in the folder ".git/refs/heads", you will find the file which has that branch name.

(By the way, the branch was renamed that way by Dropbox).

Rename that file, and you should be fine.

Answer 2

I had an issue with a branch named '-t' ( which I definitely did not push to another box)

I ended up going into my .git directory running find . |xargs grep "-t" and removing lines associated with the -t from all the files

specifically ./packed-refs, ./config ( the whole section associated with it) ./into/refs