Why does git branch -t fail with “Not tracking: ambiguous information”?

Question

When I try to create a new branch tracking a remote branch, I get this:

$ git branch -t test origin/foo
error: Not tracking: ambiguous information for ref refs/r         


        

Answer 1

I saw this also when I had two remote repo's with the same (default) fetch pattern (fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*) and the same branches.

I still haven't worked out how to fix it properly, since I want to continue to push/pull to both repo's, but manually adding the info to the project's .git/config works, e.g.:

[branch "mybranch"]
  remote = origin
  merge = refs/heads/mybranch