Mystery git branch called 'Icon'

Question

I am working on OSX Yosemite. I seem to have a branch called Icon, which I certainly haven't created deliberately:

$ git branch
Icon
* master

But if I try to delete it does not find the branch:

$ git branch -D Icon
error: branch 'Icon' not found.

Similarly, I can't check it out:

$ git checkout Icon
error: pathspec 'Icon' did not match any file(s) known to git.

What on earth is going on?

Answer 1

It's not a branch. The Icon? files are auto created by Google Drive sync client for OS X, and are a pain especially when you are using Git. When you created the repo (or cloned it), OS X automatically put an Icon? file in every single directory, including your .git/branches directory:

$ ls .git/branches/
Icon?

See these related threads for more info: How to ignore Icon? in git https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/drive/6SIZ7nhNO4w

Answer 2

Check to see if your repo is in a good condition:

git fsck --full

This will verify the integrity of your repository.

---

.git/refs/heads

If once this command finish and you still don't see any problems (no error reported) check to see what branches are stored in your local .git/refs/heads.

Git store the branches information (SHA-1 in the branch names file) per branch. If you see a file named Icon there simply delete it.

---

.git/packed-refs

edit .git/packed-refs; if you see a line with your branch name (Icon) then delete it

---

Try to sync your local repo with the remote repo

git fetch --all --prune

This will download new branches data and will delete all the deleted remote info (branches, tags etc).

---

git remote prune origin

same as the above fetch with the --prune flag. Will remove any deleted data form the remote locally as well.