Error when using with CARGO_REGISTRIES_CRATES_IO_PROTOCOL=sparse

[ChriFo]

When enabling the new index protocol with e.g. the env variable CARGO_REGISTRIES_CRATES_IO_PROTOCOL=sparse I get the following error when running cargo release patch:

$ cargo release patch
error: The repo at path /usr/local/cargo/registry/index/github.com-1ecc6299db9ec823 is unusable due to having an invalid HEAD reference: reference 'refs/heads/main' not found; class=Reference (4); code=NotFound (-3)

There is no github.com-* folder but a directory starting with index.crates.io.

[cadubentzen]

This also happened to me.
Since the sparse protocol is default as of 1.70.0, this becomes more likely to occur.
Workaround for me was setting this in ~/.cargo/config.toml:

[registries.crates-io]
protocol = "git"

[PatOConnor43]

I ran into this using cargo-release 0.24.11. I am also using Rust 1.70.0. I tried adding the ~/.cargo/config.toml workaround that was suggested above. I wasn't able to successfully cargo release patch until I ran cargo update. I'm good to go now though.