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 reliased it was related to 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 it 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.