That command causes a re-initialization of all of the files in the working copy. I got the recipe from herehttps://stackoverflow.com/a/56457412/70170. There are more details in the comment I linked originally and the subsequent response.
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From: Senthil Kumaran
If you run such a buildbot, please consider running this command on your repo to bypass the issue:
git rm -r :/ ; git checkout HEAD -- :/
You may want to consider adding this command after every update to the repo to avoid the stale state.
What does this do? Especially the first command. Is this Windows specific? -- Senthil