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I am working on OSX Yosemite. I seem to have a branch called Icon, which I certainly haven't created deliberately:

$ git branch
Icon
* master

But if I try to delete it does not find the branch:

$ git branch -D Icon
error: branch 'Icon' not found.

Similarly, I can't check it out:

$ git checkout Icon
error: pathspec 'Icon' did not match any file(s) known to git.

What on earth is going on?

Richard
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2 Answers2

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It's not a branch. The Icon? files are auto created by Google Drive sync client for OS X, and are a pain especially when you are using Git. When you created the repo (or cloned it), OS X automatically put an Icon? file in every single directory, including your .git/branches directory:

$ ls .git/branches/
Icon?

See these related threads for more info: How to ignore Icon? in git https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/drive/6SIZ7nhNO4w

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avioing
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0

Check to see if your repo is in a good condition:

git fsck --full

This will verify the integrity of your repository.

.git/refs/heads

If once this command finish and you still don't see any problems (no error reported) check to see what branches are stored in your local .git/refs/heads.

Git store the branches information (SHA-1 in the branch names file) per branch. If you see a file named Icon there simply delete it.

.git/packed-refs

edit .git/packed-refs; if you see a line with your branch name (Icon) then delete it

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Try to sync your local repo with the remote repo

git fetch --all --prune

This will download new branches data and will delete all the deleted remote info (branches, tags etc).

enter image description here

git remote prune origin

same as the above fetch with the --prune flag. Will remove any deleted data form the remote locally as well.

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CodeWizard
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