Scary git-lfs “bad object” error not so scary after all

I just got the following error while trying to push to my git-lfs-enabled repository:

ref master:: Error in git rev-list --stdin --objects --not --remotes=origin --: exit status 128 fatal: bad object f895c581f0ff52b2272318105ad7bcc09b5fb8eb

Some quick ducking revealed scary stories of repository corruptions. Eek! Not what I wanted to hear.

Turns out, however, that the error message is not as scary as it looks.

Here’s when/why you get this scary error:

1. Your repository is head of master with a commit where the only changes are git-lfs changes and

2. Your repository is actually also behind master with non-git-lfs changes (these don’t appear in git status for some reason when your working copy is in this state) and

3. You do a git push.

The fix, of course, is to git pull and merge your non-git-lfs changes and then push again.

Whew!