difficult error when fetching remote refs

[mjgaughan]

Hello!

I am running into an error when I try to fetch some refs from the remote of my repository. I have spent some time in the GitPython docs but am still unable to work my head around where I could be going wrong, thus I am opening the ticket.

I'm running into issues with the line below, where repo is a git.Repo instance.
repo.remote().fetch('refs/pull/*/merge:refs/pull/*/merge')
I have pasted the partial traceback below:

 File "collating_prs.py", line 12, in get_prs
    results = repo.remote().fetch('refs/pull/*/merge:refs/pull/*/merge')
              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "lib/python3.11/site-packages/git/remote.py", line 1069, in fetch
    res = self._get_fetch_info_from_stderr(proc, progress, kill_after_timeout=kill_after_timeout)
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/lib/python3.11/site-packages/git/remote.py", line 895, in _get_fetch_info_from_stderr
    proc.wait(stderr=stderr_text)
  File "/lib/python3.11/site-packages/git/cmd.py", line 834, in wait
    raise GitCommandError(remove_password_if_present(self.args), status, errstr)
git.exc.GitCommandError: Cmd('git') failed due to: exit code(1)
  cmdline: git fetch -v -- origin refs/pull/*/merge:refs/pull/*/merge

In a bash terminal, the command git fetch -v -- origin refs/pull/*/merge:refs/pull/*/merge works and returns the refs that I am trying to fetch.

I'm not quire sure where to start looking at this and would appreciate any guidance. Thank you for your help!