[edx-code] Birch released, and resolving issues with git pull

[David Baumgold]

Alright everyone, Birch is finally released! See the engineering blog post for more information: http://engineering.edx.org/2015/02/birch-released/

On a more technical note, the “named-release/birch” tag unexpectedly conflicted with a tag that I made on several of our repos as part of the release candidate process, called “named-release/birch/rc1”. I’ve deleted that conflicting tag from our repositories, but if you have an existing clone of our repos and try to pull, you may get an error message that looks like this:

$ git pull
error: there are still refs under 'refs/tags/named-release/birch’

If so, you can fix that error by running:

$ git tag -d named-release/birch/rc1

You may also get an error when trying to run the platform, which looks more like this:

error: 'refs/tags/named-release/birch/rc1' exists; cannot create 'refs/tags/named-release/birch'
error: Cannot lock the ref 'refs/tags/named-release/birch'.
error: some local refs could not be updated; try running
 'git remote prune origin' to remove any old, conflicting branches
  Command "/usr/bin/git fetch -q" failed with error code 1 in /edx/app/edxapp/venvs/edxapp/src/edx-ora2

If so, you can fix that error by running:

$ cd /edx/app/edxapp/venvs/edxapp/src/edx-ora2; git tag -d named-release/birch/rc1

Sorry for the inconvenience. However, I think it’s worth the fact that Birch is finally ready to go. Thank you all for your help!

David Baumgold

[David Baumgold]

Update: it looks like the conflicting tag crept into the Vagrant boxes that
we originally uploaded for Birch, and as a result, they didn't work out of
the box. We've created new Vagrant boxes for Birch, verified that they work
correctly, and overwritten the old box files that have the conflicting tag.

If you've already downloaded the old box file, Vagrant will cache the
downloaded file and refuse to download the new one until you remove the box
from Vagrant's cache. To do that, go into your ".vagrant.d" directory in
your home directory, and delete the Birch-related files in the "boxes"
directory. The next time you try to bring up a Birch devstack or fullstack,
Vagrant will re-download the box file, which is what you want.
(Alternatively, you can grab the torrent file
<https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/display/DOC/Named+Releases> to download
the new file via bittorrent.)

Note that you only have to re-download these files if you're running Open
edX through Vagrant. The git tags have not changed, so anyone not using
Vagrant is fine.

David Baumgold

Post by David Baumgold
Alright everyone, Birch is finally released! See the engineering blog post
for more information: http://engineering.edx.org/2015/02/birch-released/
On a more technical note, the “named-release/birch” tag unexpectedly
conflicted with a tag that I made on several of our repos as part of the
release candidate process, called “named-release/birch/rc1”. I’ve deleted
that conflicting tag from our repositories, but if you have an existing
clone of our repos and try to pull, you may get an error message that looks
$ git pull
error: there are still refs under 'refs/tags/named-release/birch’
$ git tag -d named-release/birch/rc1
error: 'refs/tags/named-release/birch/rc1' exists; cannot create
'refs/tags/named-release/birch'
error: Cannot lock the ref 'refs/tags/named-release/birch'.
error: some local refs could not be updated; try running
'git remote prune origin' to remove any old, conflicting branches
Command "/usr/bin/git fetch -q" failed with error code 1 in
/edx/app/edxapp/venvs/edxapp/src/edx-ora2
$ cd /edx/app/edxapp/venvs/edxapp/src/edx-ora2; git tag -d
named-release/birch/rc1
Sorry for the inconvenience. However, I think it’s worth the fact that
Birch is finally ready to go. Thank you all for your help!
David Baumgold