Local branch named "review" causes "error: unable to resolve reference" error in "git-review -d"

[Marcin Cieślak]

I've had a local branch called "review", unrelated to git-review experience:

$ git branch -vv
* master bea4447 [origin/master] Localisation updates from http://translatewiki.net.
  review c019799 Squashed commit of all RSS changes ported from SVN.

$ git-review -d 3925
Downloading refs/changes/25/3925/8 from gerrit into review/catrope/bug/30377
Cannot checkout to new branch
The following command failed with exit code 128
    "git checkout -b review/catrope/bug/30377 FETCH_HEAD"
-----------------------
error: unable to resolve reference refs/heads/review/catrope/bug/30377: Not a directory
fatal: Failed to lock ref for update: Not a directory
-----------------------

this is because

$ cat .git/refs/heads/review
c019799eea571adb04d71080400aa4715374a0e5

already exists for a local branch.

Conversely, if something is checked out with "git-review -d", it is impossible to have a local branch named "review":

$ git branch -vv
* master bea4447 [origin/master] Localisation updates from http://translatewiki.net.
  review-old c019799 Squashed commit of all RSS changes ported from SVN.

$ git-review -d 3925
Downloading refs/changes/25/3925/8 from gerrit into review/catrope/bug/30377
Switched to branch 'review/catrope/bug/30377'

$ git checkout -b review
error: there are still refs under 'refs/heads/review'
fatal: Failed to lock ref for update: Is a directory

This obviously a limitation of git (especially the latter case) but I believe "git review -d" should be able to do something in this case (workaround or a better diagnostics to the end user)