git: fatal: Cannot switch branch to a non-commit '12382'

Question

Someone else on my team created a new git branch, committed and pushed to the usual remote that we work with. When I try to check out this branch, I get this:

% git checkout 12382 fatal: Cannot switch branch to a non-commit '12382' 

I have not had trouble checking out other branches from this repository; tried checking another one out right after this (one that I did not have a local copy of), and it worked fine.

I tried building a server with this branch on our Go pipeline, it worked fine - which means the server was successful in checking out that branch.

Tried this to check the status of things:

% git remote show origin * remote origin   Fetch URL: [email protected]:mycompany/myrepository.git   Push  URL: [email protected]:mycompany/myrepository.git   HEAD branch: stage   Remote branches:     10112                     tracked     10198                     tracked     10678                     tracked ...     12382                     tracked    <<<--- ...   Local branches configured for 'git pull': ...   Local refs configured for 'git push': ... 

Could anyone suggest how to fix this? What went wrong?

Answer 1

Git is confused, because 12382 looks like a commit hash. Use the fully qualified name to checkout the branch:

git checkout refs/heads/12382 -- 

or, if it's a remote branch:

git checkout refs/remotes/origin/12382 --