[git] Using the slash character in Git branch name

I'm pretty sure I saw somewhere in a popular Git project the branches had a pattern like "feature/xyz".

However when I try to create a branch with the slash character, I get an error:

$ git branch labs/feature
error: unable to resolve reference refs/heads/labs/feature: Not a directory
fatal: Failed to lock ref for update: Not a directory

Same problem for (my initial attempt):

$ git checkout -b labs/feature

How does one create a branch in Git with the slash character?

It is possible to have hierarchical branch names (branch names with slash). For example in my repository I have such branch(es). One caveat is that you can't have both branch 'foo' and branch 'foo/bar' in repository.

Your problem is not with creating branch with slash in name.

$ git branch foo/bar
error: unable to resolve reference refs/heads/labs/feature: Not a directory
fatal: Failed to lock ref for update: Not a directory

The above error message talks about 'labs/feature' branch, not 'foo/bar' (unless it is a mistake in copy'n'paste, i.e you edited parts of session). What is the result of git branch or git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name HEAD?

I could be wrong, but I thought that slashes only appeared in branch names when they related to a remote repo, for example origin/master.

I forgot that I had already an unused labs branch. Deleting it solved my problem:

git branch -d labs
git checkout -b labs/feature

Explanation:

Each name can only be a parent branch or a normal branch, not both. Thats why the branches labs and labs/feature can't exists both at the same time.

The reason: Branches are stored in the file system and there you also can't have a file labs and a directory labs at the same level.

just had the same issue, but i could not find the conflicting branch anymore.

in my case the repo had and "foo" branch before, but not anymore and i tried to create and checkout "foo/bar" from remote. As i said "foo" did not exist anymore, but the issue persisted.

In the end, the branch "foo" was still in the .git/config file, after deleting it everything was alright :)

Sometimes that problem occurs if you already have a branch with the base name.

I tried this:

git checkout -b features/aName origin/features/aName

Unfortunately, I already had a branch named features, and I got the exception of the question asker.

Removing the branch features resolved the problem, the above command worked.