Q: how to escape / reset from incorrect state?

[kwonoj]

I deleted one of branch which is a parent of other branches, and then av sync gets an error for any sync / other command like

 ⣽ Restacking branch-xyz...
                                                   
    * ⣽ branch-others
    │                                              
    * brancy-xyz      
    │                                              
    * master 2c48375                               
                                                   
                                                   
error: failed to get branch "refs/heads/branch-xyz": reference not found

I ended up deleting .git/av and re-init, curious if there's way to escape, reset the error state.

[jainankit]

It depends - do you care about the commits of the branch that you deleted?
Let's say you have three branches (A, B, C) with corresponding commits A1, B1, C1.

master <- A1 <- B1 <- C1

Now if you delete branch A, then B and C will be orphaned (although it might show up in the tree along with the deleted branch.

Option 1

At this point, if you want to also delete the commits associated with branch A (commit A1 in this case), then you can simply reparent B:

git checkout B
av reparent --parent master

That way, your tree would look like:

master <- B1 <- C1

Option 2

But if you want both A1 and B1 to be included as part of the new branch B, you can run tidy first:

av tidy

This will remove B and C from the stack entirely, but leave the branches locally. Then you can adopt B and C manually:

git checkout B
av adopt --parent master
git checkout C
av adopt --parent B

With this, your tree will remain the same:

master <- A1 <- B1 <- C1