I'm on jenkins 1.467 and with git plugin version 1.1.19 I get the following error. After downgrading to version 1.1.16 the problem went away. Is it the same problem as reported in this bug?

Here's the log output with git plugin 1.1.19 and a fresh workspace:

Started by upstream project "easyviz-5-integrate" build number 21
[EnvInject] - Loading node environment variables.
Building remotely on bob-w7-64 in workspace c:\jenkins\workspace\easyviz-5-integrate\arch\win32
Checkout:win32 / c:\jenkins\workspace\easyviz-5-integrate\arch\win32 - hudson.remoting.Channel@2f860a43:bob-w7-64
Using strategy: Default
Last Built Revision: Revision d7e55522feb251a876a5e8c1d1370686b77db1b5 (origin/for-5.0.0/bug-14364-build-manual)
Fetching changes from 1 remote Git repository
Fetching upstream changes from ssh://builduser@git.medical-insight.com/var/git/easyviz.git
Pruning obsolete local branches
Commencing build of Revision e3e816d8d00386d76bfb615044c0acf1fa89f963 (origin/for-5.0.0/bug-14466-cppcheck)
Merging Revision e3e816d8d00386d76bfb615044c0acf1fa89f963 (origin/for-5.0.0/bug-14466-cppcheck) onto release/5.0.0
FATAL: Command "C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin\git.exe rev-parse origin/release/5.0.0^^{commit}" returned status code 128:
stdout: origin/release/5.0.0^^{commit}

stderr: fatal: ambiguous argument 'origin/release/5.0.0^^{commit}': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
Use '--' to separate paths from revisions

hudson.plugins.git.GitException: Command "C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin\git.exe rev-parse origin/release/5.0.0^^{commit}" returned status code 128:
stdout: origin/release/5.0.0^^{commit}

stderr: fatal: ambiguous argument 'origin/release/5.0.0^^{commit}': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
Use '--' to separate paths from revisions

at hudson.plugins.git.GitAPI.launchCommandIn(GitAPI.java:786)
at hudson.plugins.git.GitAPI.launchCommand(GitAPI.java:748)
at hudson.plugins.git.GitAPI.launchCommand(GitAPI.java:758)
at hudson.plugins.git.GitAPI.revParse(GitAPI.java:261)
at hudson.plugins.git.GitSCM$3.invoke(GitSCM.java:1214)
at hudson.plugins.git.GitSCM$3.invoke(GitSCM.java:1197)
at hudson.FilePath$FileCallableWrapper.call(FilePath.java:2180)
at hudson.remoting.UserRequest.perform(UserRequest.java:118)
at hudson.remoting.UserRequest.perform(UserRequest.java:48)
at hudson.remoting.Request$2.run(Request.java:287)
at hudson.remoting.InterceptingExecutorService$1.call(InterceptingExecutorService.java:72)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(Unknown Source)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(Unknown Source)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(Unknown Source)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
at hudson.remoting.Engine$1$1.run(Engine.java:60)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

This issue is due to https://github.com/jenkinsci/git-plugin/blob/master/src/main/java/hudson/plugins/git/util/DefaultBuildChooser.java#L73
trying to identify a tag, the branch is not qualified as "remote" so no incoming commit is found.

Code changed in jenkins
User: Nicolas De Loof
Path:
src/main/java/hudson/plugins/git/util/DefaultBuildChooser.java
http://jenkins-ci.org/commit/git-plugin/3b1ad202004ec3617f2023e147868876bea2e305
Log:
[FIXED JENKINS-14026] always add remote to branch for rev-parse
also support multiple remotes

Thanks very much

a workaround for this bug is to add some other branch in the SCM checkout section then add an execute-shell build stage that switches to the branch you really want to use.

jenkins 1.509.1 and jenkins git plugin 1.3.0
this bug is still here...but can be workaround easily.

============================
Branch Specifier: patch/tmp20130513/141148-7

console log:

git --version
git version 1.7.10.2 (Apple Git-33)
Fetching upstream changes from origin
No candidate revisions
ERROR: Couldn't find any revision to build. Verify the repository and branch configuration for this job.
Finished: FAILURE

BUT if we add leading "origin/" . then it works.
============================
Branch Specifier | works or not |
master | Y |
origin/master | Y |
feature/test1 | N |
origin/feature/test1| Y |