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I'm trying to create a branch on the current branch on my Ubuntu guest. Unfortunately I keep getting this error:

git checkout -b origin/feature/IF-53-change-validation-window/Tommaso
fatal: cannot lock ref 'refs/heads/origin/feature/IF-53-change-validation-window/Tommaso': 
'refs/heads/origin/branch' exists; 
cannot create 'refs/heads/origin/branch/Tommaso'
I tried git gc --prune=now as suggested here link, but keep getting the same error. 
                It also happened to me because remote had two branches with different case like Branch and branch. And on Windows file-system it just could not fetch properly
– kan
                Jul 29, 2022 at 10:17
                Could be something like this (walk through and answer): stackoverflow.com/questions/47703709/…
– NeilG
                Apr 14 at 7:59
It looks like the problem here was a branch X existed locally, and you tried to create a new branch X/Y. This won't work, because there will be a file at .git/refs/heads/X, so git can't also create the folder X.
However, it's worth adding that including "origin" in your branch name points to some confusion - origin is usually the name of the remote repository. If you run git branch I expect you will see local branches with origin in the name.
The format git checkout X is shorthand for:
look for a local branch X and check that out if it exists
otherwise look for a remote branch X and check that out locally (git checkout -b X origin/X)
To fix your current state, you can likely do this (see here):
git update-ref -d refs/heads/origin/branch
                Thank you! Actually I was creating the branch by giving the whole directory once I already was on the branch and not on origin
– Tommaso Guerrini
                Jul 17, 2017 at 11:27
                @cmbuckley If [branch] exists on origin why can't the op just do git fetch ; git checkout [branch]?
– jacknad
                Aug 27, 2019 at 11:47
                Yep - the first code block is a simple checkout. The rest of the answer explains the different modes of the checkout command, and how to recover and clean up the local refs.
– cmbuckley
                Aug 27, 2019 at 12:47
                I'm confused. Was the problem with what OP did was that the name of the new branch started with "origin/"?
– bob
                Mar 11, 2020 at 18:38
                The actual problem was probably conflicting branch names (e.g. differing only in case), and an earlier attempt to clean-up manually. There is nothing inherently wrong with naming a branch beginning with "origin/", but it certainly points to a misunderstanding of local and remote branches.
– cmbuckley
                Mar 11, 2020 at 21:14
                this one helped me to resolve the problem when git update-ref from the accepted answer didn't do the trick
– Szymon Sadło
                Feb 13 at 15:39
                Use git ls-remote and git branch -r to get an idea of your local and remote branches. Then you can try some pruning. Mine was fixed with git fetch --prune origin which I think removed a local reference to a no-longer-existent remote branch that was blocking (because it was called feature, yeah, great name for a branch).
– NeilG
                Apr 13 at 23:45
I was looking for answer here, but actually my problem was simpler, yet unresolvable.
fresh clone of repo
git checkout foo/bar
git checkout -b foo/bar/baz
got similiar error message.
As described here, you cannot use foo/bar both as a branch and directory. I had to change proposed naming convention.
                An actual command that helps someone getting this error is always a good idea in Stack Overflow answers. In this case, for instance, moving the "root" branch to a new name (git branch -M foo/bar foo/bar/main) will free up foo/bar, and allow it to be created as a dirctory, which leads to the success of git checkout -b foo/bar/baz.
– ELLIOTTCABLE
                Apr 5, 2022 at 21:59
                If you have lots of git branches with the same naming pattern, it's possible to batch rename git branches stackoverflow.com/a/44570815/3281978
– tgrrr
                Apr 18, 2022 at 5:08
                I want to create branches in my local with this protocol  {username}/featureName but since my username is the same for all branches I want to create , I am unable to create a branch. What should I do?
– etotientz
                Jun 17, 2021 at 16:02
                Worked for me, but would love some more information on what's going on here. For instance: git-gc - Cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local repository from https://git-scm.com/docs/git-gc
– Kent Robin
                May 31, 2022 at 13:50
This happend to me, too.
The reason was that I tried to create a branch with a too deep directory.
The deepest directory to successfully create was:
origin/titleA/titleB/nameOfTheNewBranch
and I first tried to create it one step deeper in
origin/titleA/titleB/titleC/nameOfTheNewBranch
which seemed to be too deep 'cause it does not work.
                This is likely not because of the depth, but because of the existence of a parent. Refs (like branches) are files on the filesystem; and if git tries to create a branch named a/b/c, it has to create directories named a and a/b. If you then try and create a/b/c/d, it's going to fail — a/b/c exists, as a file, and cannot be re-created as a dirctory to hold d as a file.
– ELLIOTTCABLE
                Apr 5, 2022 at 21:57
refs/heads
The HEAD file is usually a symbolic reference to the current branch. The so-called symbolic reference means that it is a pointer to another reference.
every branch you make(such as s/a/b/c/d) will create a path in refs/heads.
A file named 'd' which save a SHA-1 values would be touch in the path: refs/heads/s/a/b/c/d
so the problem is, you made a branch named "origin/branch" already,
so you can't make any branch named "origin/branch/xxxx" any more, why? because if u do so, git have to create a path named "origin/branch/xxxx" which would create a folder named 'branch', but u have a file named 'branch' already right? SO.
I just go a similar problem and the reason is, because of deleting the branch on the repo I couldn't access it to local so , what I do is delete the local branch and  pull the new branch from the repo then create the feature branch and it did work
if you delete the branch in the repo it is still available in local
                Sometimes the local branch could be deleted but Git still has a local reference to a remote branch, even if that no longer exists, that doesn't appear in the normal branch list. Still easy to fix if you know what you've got: stackoverflow.com/questions/47703709/…
– NeilG
                Apr 14 at 8:00
        
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