Error in newly installed magit -head branch header wrong type argument

Question

I just installed the magit package in emacs 26.3 (using CentOS 7 OS). When I start it with M-x magit, I get the error below. It works fine for me in an older installation, and the only difference I can see is that the one I just set up is using newer versions of some magit related packages. I don't see any issues posted on GitHub related to this even though it renders magit nonfunctional, so I'm wondering if anyone has a tip on how to resolve the error.

Error:

Turning on magit-auto-revert-mode...done
magit-insert-head-branch-header: Wrong type argument: stringp, nil
Error in post-command-hook (magit-section-update-highlight): (wrong-type-argument number-or-marker-p nil)

Answer 1

See https://github.com/magit/magit/issues/3458 to learn how to figure out what is wrong.

See https://github.com/magit/magit/issues/3444 to learn why you did not get a more useful error message right away and that we are aware of this and will eventually do something about it.