Your configuration specifies to merge with the from the remote, but no such ref was fetched.?

Question

I am getting this error for pull:

Your configuration specifies to merge with the ref 'refs/heads/feature/Sprint4/ABC-123-Branch' from the remote, but no such ref was fetched.

This error is not coming for any other branch.
The special thing about this branch is that it is created from the previous commit of another branch.

My config file looks like:

[core]
    repositoryformatversion = 0
    filemode = false
    bare = false
    logallrefupdates = true
    symlinks = false
    ignorecase = true
    hideDotFiles = dotGitOnly
[remote "origin"]
    url = <url here>
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
[branch "master"]
    remote = origin
    merge = refs/heads/master
[branch "new-develop"]
    remote = origin
    merge = refs/heads/new-develop
[branch "feature/Sprint4/ABC-123-Branch"]
    remote = origin
    merge = refs/heads/feature/Sprint4/ABC-123-Branch

This problem can happen when the remote branch has been deleted. Double check if it's really there. — Benny Neugebauer, Jan 18 '17 at 11:28
Future readers: If you know the remote branch exists, check if you are ignoring case or not. I had setup a local branch to track a remote branch, but typed the remote's name in all lower case letters. Just had to reconfigure local to track origin/BranchName instead of origin/branchname — Jerreck, Jun 27 '17 at 19:40
I just had this error and the problem was much simpler than the answers below, I'd lost my VPN connection. So this is also the error you get if git can't access the remote origin server. — Ben Thurley, Mar 18 '20 at 16:38

torek · Accepted Answer · 2020-07-17T00:34:37.200

What this means

Your upstream—the remote you call origin—no longer has, or maybe never had (it's impossible to tell from this information alone) a branch named feature/Sprint4/ABC-123-Branch. There's one particularly common reason for that: someone (probably not you, or you'd remember) deleted the branch in that other Git repository.

What to do

This depends on what you want. See the discussion section below. You can:

create or re-create the branch on the remote, or
delete your local branch, or
anything else you can think of.

Discussion

You must be running git pull (if you were running git merge you would get a different error message, or no error message at all).

When you run git fetch, your Git contacts another Git, based on the url line in under the [remote "origin"] section of your configuration. That Git runs a command (upload-pack) that, among other things, sends your Git a list of all branches. You can use git ls-remote to see how this works (try it, it is educational). Here is a snippet of what I get when running this on a Git repository for git itself:

$ git ls-remote origin
From [url]
bbc61680168542cf6fd3ae637bde395c73b76f0f    HEAD
60115f54bda3a127ed3cc8ffc6ab6c771cbceb1b    refs/heads/maint
bbc61680168542cf6fd3ae637bde395c73b76f0f    refs/heads/master
5ace31314f460db9aef2f1e2e1bd58016b1541f1    refs/heads/next
9e085c5399f8c1883cc8cdf175b107a4959d8fa6    refs/heads/pu
dd9985bd6dca5602cb461c4b4987466fa2f31638    refs/heads/todo
[snip]

The refs/heads/ entries list all of the branches that exist on the remote,¹ along with the corresponding commit IDs (for refs/tags/ entries the IDs may point to tag objects rather than commits).

Your Git takes each of these branch names and changes it according to the fetch line(s) in that same remote section. In this case, your Git replaces refs/heads/master with refs/remotes/origin/master, for instance. Your Git does this with every branch name that comes across.

It also records the original names in the special file FETCH_HEAD (you can see this file if you peek into your own .git directory). This file saves the fetched names and IDs.

The git pull command is meant as a convenience short cut: it runs git fetch on the appropriate remote, and then git merge (or, if so instructed, git rebase) with whatever arguments are needed to merge (or rebase) as directed by the [branch ...] section. In this case, your [branch "feature/Sprint4/ABC-123-Branch"] section says to fetch from origin, then merge with whatever ID was found under the name refs/heads/feature/Sprint4/ABC-123-Branch.

Since nothing was found under that name, git pull complains and stops.

If you ran this as two separate steps, git fetch and then git merge (or git rebase), your Git would look at your cached remotes/origin/ remote-tracking branches to see what to merge with or rebase onto. If there was such a branch at one time, you may still have the remote-tracking branch. In this case you would not get an error message. If there was never such a branch, or if you have run git fetch with --prune (which removes dead remote-tracking branches), so that you have no corresponding remote-tracking branch, you would get a complaint, but it would refer to origin/feature/Sprint4/ABC-123-Branch instead.

In either case, we can conclude that feature/Sprint4/ABC-123-Branch does not exist now on the remote named origin.

It probably did exist at one time, and you probably created your local branch from the remote-tracking branch. If so, you probably still have the remote-tracking branch. You might investigate to see who removed the branch from the remote, and why, or you might just push something to re-create it, or delete your remote-tracking branch and/or your local branch.

¹Well, all that it is going to admit to, at least. But unless they have specifically hidden some refs, the list includes everything.

Edit, Jul 2020: There's a new fetch protocol that can avoid listing everything, and only list names that your Git says it's looking for. This can help with repositories that have huge numbers of branches and/or tags. However, if your Git is interested in all possible names, you'll still get all the names here.

Thanks for explaining what the git pull command actually does. I was able to fix my issue by running git fetch and then merge. — fizch, Dec 04 '17 at 14:37
To remove non-existent remote branch references in your local repository, use `git remote prune origin` — Yoav, Jun 21 '18 at 14:54
@Ben-Uri: yes, or, run `git fetch --prune origin`, or set `fetch.prune` to `true` in your configuration (all three are intended to do the same thing, although in a few versions of Git some of these were not quite reliable). — torek, Jun 21 '18 at 15:13
You'd need to `git checkout ` and all be good (in some cases). — Alexander Shtang, Jul 29 '19 at 18:33
Wow... So weird. This only happens to me when connecting to BitBucket. :( — Will Strohl, Oct 10 '19 at 22:15
@WillStrohl: to see what branches the Git at Bitbucket actually has, use `git ls-remote `. Your current branch has, as its upstream, a branch name that does not exist in that Git at Bitbucket. How you got there, and what to do about it, is in the answer above. — torek, Oct 10 '19 at 22:24
The problem for me was that I deleted a development branch on Github without ever merging it (I abandoned the change). I got the same error message as the original poster. The solution for me was to delete my _local_ `master` branch and re-create it. — Jonathan Benn, Mar 09 '20 at 14:33
@JonathanBenn: you can use `git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master master` to switch the upstream setting for your local `master`. Delete-and-recreate has that as a side effect (assuming you use the DWIM-style `git checkout master` to create it), with an additional side effect of forcing your `master` to match your `origin/master`. — torek, Mar 09 '20 at 17:57
@torek thanks, my Git-fu was not up to the task on this one. I'll keep in mind your recommendation for next time. I must have created a new local branch based on the deleted remote one, and then renamed my local branch to `master`. — Jonathan Benn, Mar 11 '20 at 12:23
argh! I ran into this. A github project renamed the master branch main! — codeDr, Jul 12 '20 at 13:38

Extreme · Answer 2 · 2018-03-27T17:36:01.763

91

This can also happen if you/someone renamed the branch. So follow these steps (if you know that branch name is renamed) Assuming earlier branch name as wrong-branch-name and someone renamed it to correct-branch-name So.

git checkout correct-branch-name

git pull (you'll see this "Your configuration specifies..")

git branch --unset-upstream

git push --set-upstream origin correct-branch-name

git pull (you'll not get the earlier message )

edited Mar 27 '18 at 17:36

answered Jan 04 '18 at 16:57

Extreme

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It's not even necessary to `git push` and it won't work if the current branch is behind its remote. `git pull origin correct-branch-name` is enough. – Pierre Nov 08 '18 at 11:00
7

The command to set upstream is wrong above. Do a git pull after, --unset-upstream operation, in the output of the pull you can see a error, with the command to set the upstream, like below, git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/ mybranch – Ankit Marothi Oct 03 '19 at 11:15
Worked nicely for me after removing some large files from my repo and needed to push back to a new repo i just created – Akah Dec 14 '19 at 19:20
1

For anyone visiting this more recently: '--set-upstream' is no longer supported. Now you should use "git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/ main" – Joshua Bone Jan 28 '21 at 20:03

Malhaar Punjabi · Answer 3 · 2017-11-07T23:01:55.200

44

Check if your remote branch is available to pull. I had the same issue, finally realized the remote branch was deleted by someone.

edited Nov 07 '17 at 23:01

answered Oct 19 '17 at 22:20

Malhaar Punjabi

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5

It was the same for me! – Aerin Mar 03 '18 at 00:17
5

After a pull request, the merger (i.e. the person who did the merge) has the option to delete the branch that was merged into the target branch. If you try to pull at that point you'll get this error. – Artokun Oct 01 '18 at 19:48
that is true :) – Malhaar Punjabi Mar 05 '19 at 00:39

score 11 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 20 '20 at 18:27

This is a more common error now as many projects are moving their master branch to another name like main, primary, default, root, reference, latest, etc, as discussed at Github plans to replace racially insensitive terms like ‘master’ and ‘whitelist’.

To fix it, first find out what the project is now using, which you can find via their github, gitlab or other git server.

Then do this to capture the current configuration:

$ git branch -vv
...
* master  968695b [origin/master] Track which contest a ballot was sampled for (#629)
...

Find the line describing the master branch, and note whether the remote repo is called origin, upstream or whatever.

Then using that information, change the branch name to the new one, e.g. if it says you're currently tracking origin/master, substitute main:

git branch master --set-upstream-to origin/main

You can also rename your own branch to avoid future confusion:

git branch -m main

thanks for catch! This main master thing is only getting more frustration. — Abbas Elmas, Feb 18 '21 at 15:31
Or `git fetch upstream`, `git checkout main`, then next time `git pull`. — gerrit, Apr 16 '21 at 13:36

score 9 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 16 '17 at 18:33

9

For me it was a case sensitivity issue. My local branch was Version_feature2 instead of Version_Feature2. I re-checked out my branch using the correct casing and then git pull worked.

answered Oct 16 '17 at 18:33

nicko

360
2
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2

This turned out to be my problem too. It's not necessary obvious with fairly long/complicated branch names. – Håkon K. Olafsen Sep 03 '19 at 07:14

score 7 · Answer 6 · edited May 10 '18 at 15:55

7

In my case I was simply lacking of initial commit on remote branch, so local branch wasn't finding anything to pull and it was giving that error message.

I did:

git commit -m 'first commit' // on remote branch
git pull // on local branch

edited May 10 '18 at 15:55

JOATMON

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answered Apr 21 '17 at 08:28

Nicola Gallazzi

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score 6 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 12 '17 at 16:39

6

I got a similar error when the actual cause was that my disk was full. After deleting some files, git pull began to work as I expected.

answered Feb 12 '17 at 16:39

user1747134

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15
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Same here - I guess git tries to fetch something from the remote, silently fails to write it because the disk is full, and then doesn't find the files and complains that the "ref wasn't fetched"? – rob74 Feb 04 '21 at 12:25

score 6 · Answer 8 · edited Nov 28 '17 at 10:08

6

This error can also be received when the origin branch name has some case issue.

For example: origin branch is team1-Team and the local branch has been checkout as team1-team. Then, this T in -Team and t in -team can cause such error. This happened in my case. So, by changing the local name with the origin branch's name, the error was solved.

edited Nov 28 '17 at 10:08

Xpleria

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answered Nov 28 '17 at 09:08

akgupta

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score 5 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 03 '20 at 11:33

5

You can easily link your local branch with remote one by running:

git checkout <your-local-branch>
git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/<correct-remote-branch> <your-local-branch>
git pull

answered Jan 03 '20 at 11:33

Gendos-ua

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score 3 · Answer 10 · answered Mar 18 '19 at 18:05

3

I kept running into this issue. In my case, @Jerreck's comment about case differences in the branch names was the cause of this error. Some Windows tools aren't aware of case sensitivity.

To turn off case-sensitivity in git, run this command:

git config --global core.ignorecase true

Note that this will impact more than branch names. For example, if you have "Foo.h" and "foo.h" in the same directory (not a great idea when building software for Windows) then I suspect you cannot turn off case sensitivity.

answered Mar 18 '19 at 18:05

Stéphane

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This doesn't help with the issue because `core.ignorecase` option only affects your files but not git internal files (which resides in `.git` folder) – Lu55 Nov 11 '20 at 03:12
`core.ignorecase true` does not work for me (the problem was a case difference in the branch name). So I've just set upstream to the correct branch name – oleksa Feb 05 '21 at 09:53

AB Abhi · Answer 11 · 2018-11-01T10:24:48.107

2

Just check if someone deleted the branch at remote.

edited Nov 01 '18 at 10:24

answered Nov 01 '18 at 05:30

AB Abhi

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score 2 · Answer 12 · answered Jun 30 '19 at 11:34

In my case, i had deleted the original branch from which my current branch derived from. So in the .git/config file i had:

[branch "simil2.1.12"]
    remote = origin
    merge = refs/heads/simil2.0.5
    rebase = false

the simil2.0.5 was deleted. I replaced it with the same branch name:

[branch "simil2.1.12"]
    remote = origin
    merge = refs/heads/simil2.1.12
    rebase = false

and it worked

score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Apr 06 '21 at 08:31

I had a similar issue with master/main branch. In my case I did not have enough free space on my harddisk. After freeing up some space, it worked.

I assume its because the files /.git needs some space to edit its file. For example the file: 'refs/heads/feature/Sprint4/ABC-123-Branch'

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Sep 23 '17 at 05:47

For me this happened because i merged a branch dev into master using web interface and then tried to sync/pull using VSCode which was open on dev branch.(its weird that i could not change to master without getting this error.)

git pull
Your configuration specifies to merge with the ref 'refs/heads/dev'
from the remote, but no such ref was fetched.'

It makes sense that is not finding it refs/heads/dev - for me it was easier to just delete the local folder and clone again.

score 0 · Answer 15 · answered Jan 10 '19 at 12:19

0

I just got exactly this error when doing "git pull" when my disk was full. Created some space and it all started working fine again.

answered Jan 10 '19 at 12:19

user7550381

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score 0 · Answer 16 · answered Jan 30 '19 at 11:38

0

You can edit the ~/.gitconfig file in your home folder. This is where all --global settings are saved.

Or, use git config --global --unset-all remote.origin.url and after run git fetch with repository url.

answered Jan 30 '19 at 11:38

Angelo Mendes

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score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Mar 29 '19 at 14:09

I was facing the same issue where my current branch was dev and I was checking out to MR branch and doing git pull thereafter. An easy workaround that I took was I created a new folder for MR Branch and did git pull there followed by git clone.

So basically I maintained different folders for pushing code to different branch.

score 0 · Answer 18 · answered Nov 07 '19 at 09:54

I just got the same error, when I didn't use the correct case. I could checkout out 'integration'. Git told me to perform a git pull to update my branch. I did that, but received the mentioned error. The correct branch name is 'Integration' with a capital 'I'. When I checked out that branch and pulled, it worked without problem.

score 0 · Answer 19 · answered Apr 03 '21 at 11:20

In my case, I renamed the branch on Github which in return told me to execute the following commands:

The default branch has been renamed!

main is now named <new_name>

If you have a local clone, you can update it by running:

git branch -m main <new_name>
git fetch origin
git branch -u origin/<new_name> <new_name>
git remote set-head origin -a

score -2 · Answer 20 · answered Aug 04 '17 at 16:49

-2

If another pull just works, it means your internet wasn't connected.

answered Aug 04 '17 at 16:49

Pyrolistical

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A number of downvotes and yet this was the cause I had of receiving this error. I had Internet but had lost the VPN to my git server. After reconnecting to the VPN the pull worked fine. – Ben Thurley Mar 18 '20 at 16:41

Your configuration specifies to merge with the from the remote, but no such ref was fetched.?

20 Answers20

What this means

What to do

Discussion

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