If no feature branch appears after committing destructive changes, what could likely have gone wrong?

When no feature branch appears after committing destructive changes, the most likely cause is that the metadata API name was misspelled during the entry. In version control systems, especially when dealing with metadata like in Salesforce, accurate naming is crucial. If the API name is not spelled correctly, the system would not recognize the intended metadata for the destructive changes, leading to the absence of the expected feature branch. This situation would prevent the creation of a new branch that reflects the changes you wanted to commit, as the system cannot process an invalid reference.

Other possible issues, such as internal errors in the commit process or operations not being supported by the system, are generally less likely to cause such a specific outcome. These scenarios might lead to error messages or failure logs but would not result in the complete disappearance of a branch. Similarly, if a branch were locked for edits, it would indicate that the changes were not permitted but would not directly imply that no branch was created at all.