Re: User report on git 2.55.0

["brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>]

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On 2026-09-04 at 18:05:43, Ramkumar Ramachandra wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I recently bumped to the latest version of git on macOS via homebrew, and here's what I've noticed:
> 
> 1. git-replay now updates the ref, simplifying my git-reply-checkout script. Someone on this list recommended it to me in response to an issue I had a long time ago, and I think I can safely say that git-replay is an invaluable tool. Thanks!
> 2. git-pull often fails with a dangling remote ref error, and fails to update the current branch (main, in my case): the workaround is to reset-hard to origin/main. I'm not sure if this is a GitHub issue, or a bug in core git: I've never encountered this behavior on older versions of git, with the exception of submodules.
> 3. git-diff sometimes exits with 0 code without printing a diff, even though the worktree is dirty: the workaround is to run it again. I've never encountered this behavior on older versions of git, and I think it might be a subtle race in core git.
> 4. `git checkout -` sometimes fails with an invalid ref error after a pull, where the previous branch is a local branch. I don't know if this is due to a background git-gc with some behavior change, but I never encountered this behavior on older versions without an operation that would cause this.
> 
> Before digging further to find the root cause, I'd like to know if there is some explanation I'm missing, or if these are known issues?

I haven't heard of any of these things and I usually follow bug reports
to the list fairly closely.  I also use Homebrew's Git on my work Mac
using macOS 26 and haven't run into any of these things, either.  I feel
like my colleagues would have mentioned this, too, and I haven't heard
about any such thing anywhere, including in our Git users channel.

Do you maybe have some sort of security software running on your Mac?
That seems like a thing that could cause items 2–4.  Also, are you
having any sort of other disk, hardware, or other problems where files
sometimes go missing or don't have the expected content?

Are you using files or reftable as the ref backend for your repositories
(or a combination of both)?  If you're using the files backend, does
switch to reftable (`git refs migrate --ref-format=reftable`) fix the
problem or change the behaviour?
-- 
brian m. carlson (they/them)
Toronto, Ontario, CA

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