git checkout master does not switch branch - repository broken?

Question

tl;dr: git checkout master does not switch to master branch, gives no error or any output at all and I have no clue why. Any other branch works fine.

I have a git repository that consists of the branches development and master. I do a fresh clone of the repository, checking out branch development as default.

$ git clone <REPO-URL> --branch development
$ git branch -a
* development
origin/HEAD -> origin/development
origin/development
origin/master
$ git show-ref 
656c781c2affc26792f857baf8e232de07101535 refs/heads/development
656c781c2affc26792f857baf8e232de07101535 refs/remotes/origin/HEAD
656c781c2affc26792f857baf8e232de07101535 refs/remotes/origin/development
cfee1a1761642453edf5d001565f23b50243ff09 refs/remotes/origin/master

The ref master is pointing to is correct, that commit does exists and is the latest commit of my master branch.

So far everything looks normal, but when I try to switch to master this is happening:

$ git checkout master
$ git branch 
* development

No message from checkout, no error, nothing, and the branch is not switched.

Things I have tried so far:

• Creating a second branch master2 from the same commit => checkout works fine.
• Deleting and re-creating branch master both local and on origin => again no checkout possible
• git checkout -b master --track origin/master => works, but I think it should not be necessary to use this command as this is what git checkout master should do automatically
• Committing and pushing to master works, but does not change the checkout problem
• I tried several git versions (1.9, 2.2) and machines (linux, windows), problem occurs everywhere.

Any further ideas? What am I missing? Is my repository broken? How can I fix this?

Answer 1

If your repo has a folder or file name the same as a branch name then you will need to: git checkout xyz -- with the extra -- at the end. It tells git to use a branch or commit instead of trying to use a folder/file name.

Found the answer on another stackoverflow post: Git change branch when file of same name is present