github network shows a mysterious branch

Question

I work on 2 main branches namely 'develop' and 'master'.

Everything was working perfectly fine until today.

When I saw the network graph on github, there was a mysterious yellow colored branch coming out of master and having no name.

I have attached the images both labelled and unlabeled version of network graph.

What could have possibly gone wrong?

Answer 1

At some point did you merge a branch with git merge mybranch --no-ff and then delete mybranch? The --no-ff (no fast forward) forces git to make a merge commit so there's a record of the branch existing at some point, however the name is now gone.