Getting error “Unable to parse remote unpack status” when attempting to push to Azure Repo in Azure DevOPs

This blog post is about a situation where I went to push my latest local changes to my git repository up in Azure DevOPs and got the weirdest error:

error: unable to parse remote unpack status: ng refs/heads/..

An error occurred while communicating with the remote host. The error code is 0x800703E5.

Resolution:

Short Answer:

Upgrade Git for Windows.

Longer Answer:

It took me a while but I realised it was related ot the fact that the git version (2.16.2) I was using on my windows machine was old.

The only real give away was

remote: Azure Repos

And something went off in my head “huh – I wonder if is is because I’m using an old version of Git for Windows”.

So I upgraded (the installer for Git for Windows is very easy) and the problem has gone away..

Yip