Binary package hint: git-core
I am using Ubuntu 10.10. Git-Core 1:1.7.1-1.1ubuntu0.1 - The bug is that if you happen to create a new remote branch which shares it's name with an existing directory in the top level of the git repository, git then seems to get confused and the: git checkout <branch> - command doesn't switch to that branch or turn tracking on (and seems to think it was created from origin/<branch> rather than from refs/remotes/origin/<branch>), which it does correctly if the branch doesn't share a name with an existing top level directory. This can be rectified by running: git checkout --track -b <branch> origin/<branch> - but this confused me for several hours and it was only because I had another repository with the same branch names, but different top level directories where the command worked that it finally dawned on me what the problem was. I then deleted the branch and created a new one with a different name and everything worked as expected. This isn't a serious bug, but it could be very confusing for new users like myself. Perhaps the program can check to make sure you don't try to create a branch with the same name as a top level directory (or visa versa) and say that this is not permitted?
Indeed. Ordinarily you can explicitly disambiguate (see the first few paragraphs of ‘git help cli’): you can specify the branch with ‘git checkout ambiguous --’ or the directory with ‘git checkout -- ambiguous’. However, that doesn’t work when initially setting up a tracking branch:
$ git branch -a
* master
remotes/
remotes/
remotes/
$ git ls-files
what/file
$ git checkout what
$ git branch
* master
$ git checkout what --
fatal: invalid reference: what
$ git rm -r what
rm 'what/file'
$ git checkout what
D what/file
Branch what set up to track remote branch what from origin.
Switched to a new branch 'what'
Can you point out this problem to the upstream Git mailing list (<email address hidden>)?