Why has Git allowed me to create two branches with the same name?

Question

I'm still relatively new to Git and I have made a bit of a mess of my repository. I'm hoping there is a way to fix it without re-cloning.

I have a repository which I have cloned from Github. The repository has several branches. I worked on the master branch for a while but then needed to switch to one of the other branches.

So, I had:

$ git branch --all * master   remotes/origin/abc   remotes/origin/def   remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master   remotes/origin/ghi 

Problem: I wanted to switch to the 'abc' branch but instead of doing git checkout remotes/origin/abc I accidentally did git branch remotes/origin/abc which leaves me with the following:

$ git branch --all * master   remotes/origin/abc   remotes/origin/abc   remotes/origin/def   remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master   remotes/origin/ghi 

My questions are:

• Why on Earth does Git allow you to create two branches with the same name?
• How do I identify which is the real remotes/origin/abc branch?
• How do I remove the unwanted remotes/origin/abc that I created by accident?

Any help much appreciated.

Answer 1

You can't create two local branches or two distant branches with the same name.

• Here you have a local branch named remotes/origin/abc and a distant branch named abc on the remote origin. They have not the same name, but it seems to when you use the git branch --all command.

• To identify which branch is which, you can show local branches with git branch, or show remote branches with git branch --remote. You could also easily differentiate them even while using git branch --all with the branch syntax coloration (git config --global color.branch auto).

• To remove the accidentally created local branch abc, you have to do git branch -d abc (or git branch -D abc to force deletion, see man git-branch).