I'm getting a strange "cannot lock ref" error when trying to pull changes from github. I've tried git gc, and looked around for similar errors but can't find a solution.
> git pull
error: cannot lock ref 'refs/tags/v2.8': 'refs/tags' exists; cannot create 'refs/tags/v2.8'
From github.com:k3it/qsorder
! [new tag] v2.8 -> v2.8 (unable to update local ref)
error: cannot lock ref 'refs/tags/v2.9': 'refs/tags' exists; cannot create 'refs/tags/v2.9'
! [new tag] v2.9 -> v2.9 (unable to update local ref)
Your Git is complaining that a reference (rather than a directory) named refs/tags exists. It's not clear what would create that, but see if git rev-parse refs/tags produces a hash ID. If so, that reference needs to go away:
git update-ref -d refs/tags
after which git fetch should work.
If git rev-parse refs/tags fails (which it should—refs/tags itself should not be a valid name) then this is not the problem and it's not clear what the actual problem is.