warning: refname 'xxx' is ambiguous when using git-svn

Question

I am using git as a frontend to Subversion (via git svn).

So, for every svn trunk/branch I have remote branch in git named \"remotes/xxx\". For example \"remotes/tru

Answer 1

To avoid the conflict messages, when referring to local branches, prefix them with heads/

for example, the conflicting branch topic

$ git diff topic remotes/topic
warning: reframe 'topic' is ambiguous.
...

becomes

$ git diff heads/topic remotes/topic
...

Answer 2

If you just want to get rid of warning, set core.warnAmbiguousRefs to false:

git config --global core.warnambiguousrefs false

If you want this behavior only for single repository, omit --global flag.

Answer 3

If you pass the --prefix=svn/ flag to the git svn clone command, then all of the Subversion branches would be named like remotes/svn/branchname. If this is acceptable to you, it fixes the "refname is ambiguous" warning. It also gives you a nice way of referring to the remote svn branches, as in for instance if you want to create a local tracking branch it would be something like:

$ git checkout -b branchname svn/branchname

The local branch then has the same name as the remote svn branch, and no ambiguous refname problem.

Answer 4

It can be possible that you have another 'trunk' and 'coolfeature' as a tag. In this case, git doesn't know if you refer to branch or tag. Rename the tags and check if git doesn't report "ambiguous" name