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The reference at "HEAD" could not be instantiated: Reference name cannot start with a dot #1743
Description
Duplicates
- I have searched the existing issues
Current behavior 😯
one such weakness of
onefetchis this:> onefetch Error: Failed to traverse Git commit history Caused by: 0: The reference at "HEAD" could not be instantiated 1: The path "refs/heads/.invalid" to a symbolic reference within a ref file is invalid 2: Reference name cannot start with a dot > git refs migrate --ref-format=files > onefetch --no-art -d pending groutoutlook ~ git version 2.53.0.windows.3 ------------------------------------------- Project: onefetch (1 branch) Description: Command-line Git information tool HEAD: 8d4e4c8 (main, origin/main) Version: 2.27.1 Created: 21 hours ago Languages: ● Rust (97.3 %) ● Shell (2.1 %) ● Makefile (0.4 %) ● Ruby (0.2 %) Dependencies: 23 (Cargo) Author: 100% dependabot[bot] 1 Last change: 21 hours ago URL: https://github.com/o2sh/onefetch Commits: 1 (shallow) Churn (1): .gitignore 1 …/git/metrics.rs 1 …/info/head.rs 1 Lines of code: 5417 Size: 2.06 MiB (130 files) License: MIT # output here.Core issue is
onefetchstill agittool and lots of thing dependent onlibgit2have to finish migrating toreftablebackend first.
Expected behavior 🤔
Successful execution
Steps to reproduce 🕹
N/A
Additional context/Screenshots 🔦
Bringing over this bug report I got in spenserblack/gengo#680 (comment)
Possible Solution 💡
No response
Activity
spenserblack commentedon May 7, 2026
@Byron Could this be an issue gix could/should resolve? Looks like this may be related to Windows. Are you familiar with the
refs/heads/.invalidfile? Assuming that's the actual filename and not an example, looks like it could be an intentionally invalid file that git's plumbing would create?Just wanted to make you aware. IDK if there's anything that actually should be done on gix's side.
Byron commentedon May 7, 2026
Git marks
HEADwith an invalid value when thereftablebackend is used to fail older clients early.Support for this is planned to land in
gitoxidebefore September this year to be Git3 ready.There is nothing that can be done to workaround it, unless one would want to have a
gitexecutable fallback to read refs for these cases. Maybe it's just one call anyway?spenserblack commentedon May 7, 2026
Probably best to just leave it alone, then. It looks like the user was able to fix their issue with
git refs migrate --ref-format=files, so perhaps a simple solution could be to detect the error type and offer that as a suggestion?Byron commentedon May 7, 2026
Probably.
But once the error is detected, it would be as easy to try to use
git, but only ifonefetchreally is only interested in a single ref to keep it easy and fast.