git-client plugin: 1.9.1
github plugin: 1.8
git plugin: 2.2.2

We had a project which was set up to trigger on GHE changes to the "festivus-dev" branch. We noticed that changes being pushed to the "master" branch on GHE was triggering a the "festivus-dev" branch job.

It turns out that there was a second "jdoe/blah/festivus-dev" branch that was present and it appeared to cause the polling command to think there were always changes present.

When we removed the "jdoe/blah/festivus-dev" branch from the repo, polling returned to normal. Changes checked into the "master" branch no longer triggered builds in the "festivus-dev" project.

We also noticed that when the similarly named branch ("jdoe/blah/festivus-dev") was present in the repo, it did not matter what was entered in the branch section of the project. We had a typo in there, and the build was still being triggered.

Prior to removing the similarly-named branch, we saw this in the jenkins.log:

INFO: Poked Festivus_master_CI
Jul 18, 2014 12:04:04 PM com.cloudbees.jenkins.GitHubWebHook processGitHubPayload
INFO: Poked Festivus_festivus-dev_CI
Jul 18, 2014 12:04:04 PM com.cloudbees.jenkins.GitHubWebHook processGitHubPayload
INFO: SCM changes detected in Festivus_festivus-dev_CI. Triggering #1547
Jul 18, 2014 12:04:05 PM com.cloudbees.jenkins.GitHubPushTrigger$1 run
INFO: SCM changes detected in Festivus_master_CI. Triggering #317
Jul 18, 2014 12:04:13 PM hudson.model.Run execute

And we also saw this in the polling log:

Started on Jul 18, 2014 12:04:04 PM
Using strategy: Default
[poll] Last Built Revision: Revision 652d86ee1fb4715c28902b386d32d623c15c77e9 (origin/festivus-dev)
> /usr/bin/git ls-remote -h git@github.some.where.com:SITE/Festivus.git festivus-dev
Done. Took 0.43 sec
Changes found

And we also saw this on the command line:

git ls-remote -h git@github.some.where.com:SITE/Festivus.git festivus-dev
849c9e7c5d497816427516146d5bd8f778897641 refs/heads/jdoe/blah/festivus-dev
652d86ee1fb4715c28902b386d32d623c15c77e9 refs/heads/festivus-dev

After we removed the jdoe/blah/festivus-dev branch,

INFO: Poked Festivus_master_CI
Jul 18, 2014 12:37:55 PM com.cloudbees.jenkins.GitHubWebHook processGitHubPayload
INFO: Poked Festivus_festivus-dev_CI
Jul 18, 2014 12:37:55 PM com.cloudbees.jenkins.GitHubWebHook processGitHubPayload
INFO: SCM changes detected in Festivus_master_CI. Triggering #322