Tech Tip – Fixing my local Git Repository

Twice now, I have run into some odd corruption with a local Git repository. Since I had to look it up twice, a quick post is in order.

Symptom

When doing a fetch or pull, I would get an error like this:

error: cannot lock ref 'refs/remotes/origin/some/branch-name': is at <hash> but expected <different hash>

I honestly haven’t the slightest idea what is causing it, but it has happened twice now.

The Fix

A Google search led to a few issues in various places, but the one that worked was from the Github desktop repository:

git gc --prune=now
rm -Rf .git/refs/remote/origin
git fetch

I never attempted this with staged or modified files, so, caveat emptor. But my local branches were just fine after, so make I would make sure you do not have any modified or staged files before trying this.