Fix for cleaning a repository when: "error: Couldn't set refs/heads/branchName"

git-failed-to-push.sh

# Solves:
#   error: Couldn't set refs/heads/branchName
#   To X:xxx.git  
#   ! [remote rejected] branchName -> branchName (failed to write)
#   error: failed to push some refs to 'X:xxx.git'

git fsck --unreachable
git reflog expire --expire=0 --all
git repack -a -d -l
git prune
git gc --aggressive

Just a warning to anyone else that finds this - the double dashes have been converted to long single dashes above. It should be:

git fsck --unreachable
git reflog expire --expire=0 --all
git repack -a -d -l
git prune
git gc --aggressive

In any case, this didn't work for me. The problem seemed to be that the reference to HEAD in my remote was wrong.

I updated

REMOTE: .git/refs/heads/master

to be the same as

LOCAL: .git/refs/heads/master

and everything worked again. I'm using Google Drive to store repos.

EDIT: but the next time I made a commit and tried to push it, I'm back to the same error

I had the same problem. I quit Google Drive and did a 'git push' and it worked. So there is some workaround at least.

I find myself having to do this on every commit if its been more than like, 5 minutes. Is there a permanent fix? ( i am not suing google drive or anything). Furthermore, I find this corrupts my history and makes lal my commits look like they were at once.

I have been having this issue a lot, with remote stored in a network drive. Apparently local refs have drifted from remote. The tip from the ohshitgit guide is useful (https://ohshitgit.com/), in all cases it has solved my problem, as long as it is ok to reset local:

git reset --hard origin/branchName