Push git commit without a branch

Question

In Git, I can use the following syntax to push a specific commit to a specific remote branch:

git push remote COMMIT:branchname

However, this ONLY works if there is a local branch which references COMMIT. Is there a way to do this push for a commit, even if there is no ref that refers to it?

Answer 1

The full spelling of a branch name is refs/heads/branchname. When you push, if the destination ref doesn't begin with refs/ Git figures out what prefix you meant by looking at what you're pushing. But if there's a bare commit there, it has nothing to go on, so you have to specify the full spelling of the destination ref explicitly:

git push origin 54adf:refs/heads/branchname