That command causes a re-initialization of all of the files in the working copy. I got the recipe from here. There are more details in the comment I linked originally and the subsequent response.


From: Senthil Kumaran <senthil@python.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 3, 2021 09:29
To: Jason R. Coombs <jaraco@jaraco.com>
Cc: python-dev@python.org <python-dev@python.org>
Subject: Re: [Python-Dev] Windows buildbots may be broken
 
On Fri, Jul 30, 2021 at 02:28:08PM +0000, Jason R. Coombs wrote:

> 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