When invoking meld inside a git repo, I get a bunch of warnings before meld opens :
# from within a git repo :
$ meld .
fatal: bad revision '^origin/branch/one'
fatal: bad revision '^origin/branch/two'
fatal: bad revision '^origin/branch/three'
...
This is just a warning printed on STDERR, meld runs fine afterwards and displays the expected diff.
Most of these branches have a local checkout, but no matching remote reference on origin.
One of these references doesn't even exist locally (it is one misspell away from an existing branch).
Does someone know I could dispose of these disgraceful messages ?
The problem was in my repo configuration.
Some local branches were still tracking stale remote branches :
the .git/config file still contained sections :
[branch "branch/one"]
remote = origin
merge = refs/heads/branch/one
even though the remote branch branch/one did not exist anymore, and my local reference origin/branch/one was (correctly) deleted.
I didn't find any direct command to clean my local branches up.
I was hoping git remote prune origin would clean this up, but it didn't.
Here is a way I found to have my local branches stop tracking stale remote branches :
# enumerate all local branches, and print "branchname upstreamname" :
git for-each-ref --format="%(refname:short) %(upstream:short)" refs/heads |\
# keep branches which track a remotre branch in origin :
grep "origin/" |\
# loop on output :
while read local remote; do
# use any command which fails on an invalid ref :
if ! git show $remote -- &> /dev/null then
# if it failed : stop tracking this stale remote
git branch $local --unset-upstream
fi
done