The command “eval git fetch origin +refs/pull/7/merge:” failed

Question

My TravisCI build is failing continuously, and I am getting the following error:

The command "eval git fetch origin +refs/pull/7/merge:" failed 3 times.

This is full trace of error:

$ git fetch origin +refs/pull/7/merge:
fatal: Couldn't find remote ref refs/pull/7/merge
Unexpected end of command stream
The command "eval git fetch origin +refs/pull/7/merge:" failed. Retrying, 2 of 3.
fatal: Couldn't find remote ref refs/pull/7/merge
Unexpected end of command stream
The command "eval git fetch origin +refs/pull/7/merge:" failed. Retrying, 3 of 3.
fatal: Couldn't find remote ref refs/pull/7/merge
Unexpected end of command stream
The command "eval git fetch origin +refs/pull/7/merge:" failed 3 times.
The command "git fetch origin +refs/pull/7/merge:" failed and exited with 128 during .
Your build has been stopped.

Answer 1

It's most likely because you attempted to build a PR that was already merged / closed.

I've experienced the same error before.

When it's happened to me, I've usually just merged a PR into master (but haven't necessarily deleted the branch the PR was on yet).

I then switch over to Travis and kick off a build for the (now merged) PR branch, instead of for master. The branch was still there, but I guess since the PR was merged it's unavailable for Travis to fetch.