Message 'src refspec master does not match any' when pushing commits in Git

Question

I clone my repository with:

git clone ssh://xxxxx/xx.git 

But after I change some files and add and commit them, I want to push them to the server:

git add xxx.php
git commit -m "TEST"
git push origin master

But the error I get back is:

error: src refspec master does not match any.  
error: failed to push some refs to 'ssh://xxxxx.com/project.git'

Solution 1

Maybe you just need to commit. I ran into this when I did:

mkdir repo && cd repo
git remote add origin /path/to/origin.git
git add .

Oops! Never committed!

git push -u origin master
error: src refspec master does not match any.

All I had to do was:

git commit -m "initial commit"
git push origin main

Success!

Solution 2

1. Try git show-ref to see what refs you have. Is there a refs/heads/master?

Due to the recent "Replacing master with main in GitHub" action, you may notice that there is a refs/heads/main. As a result, the following command may change from git push origin HEAD:master to git push origin HEAD:main

2. You can try git push origin HEAD:master as a more local-reference-independent solution. This explicitly states that you want to push the local ref HEAD to the remote ref master (see the git-push refspec documentation).

Solution 3

I also had a similar error after deleting all files on my local computer, and I have to clean up all files in the repository.

My error message was something like this:

error: src refspec master does not match any.
error: failed to push some refs to 'git@github ... .git'

And it was solved by executing the following commands:

touch README
git add README

git add (all other files)
git commit -m 'reinitialized files'
git push origin master --force  # <- caution, --force can delete others work.

Solution 4

git push -u origin master
error: src refspec master does not match any.

For that you need to enter the commit message as follows and then push the code:

git commit -m "initial commit"

git push origin master

Successfully pushed to master.

Solution 5

For me I had to make sure the public key is properly configured on the server (appended in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys) and in GitHub/Bitbucket (added to my SSH keys on GitHub or Bitbucket) - they need to match. Then:

git add --all :/
git commit -am 'message'
git push -u origin master

View more solutions

Comments

[tandrewnichols]

@Marco That's not a duplicate. That one is a very specific issue about pushing a local branch to a remote branch. This one is about initializing a repo and pushing it up. They produce the same error, but the REASONS they produce that error and the fixes are entirely different. Also, sinoohe, you should accept an answer. Probably the first one, seeing as it answers the question and has helped over 350 people.

[IgorGanapolsky]

Did you set up your git config commands to install and configure git globally on your machine?

[Samitha Chathuranga]

Hope this post would be useful to somebody- samranga.blogspot.com/2015/07/… The error in the question can be popped even when tried to Create a git BitBucket repository from an already locally existing project

[Tom Howard]

I received this error trying to push the wrong branch name. Resolved using git status to get the proper one.

[Jaime]

Adding a comment to call out @aug2uag's alternative answer - sleepily skipping git commit can cause this error, as well!

[jww]

Yet another simple task made difficult by Git. The Git devs should use Stack Overflow as feedback in their SDLC loop. 850,000+ people should indicate something is seriously wrong with Git's workflow. They need to hire a UX expert because they clearly cannot git it right on their own.

[Blasanka]

If you didnt add git add with dot or some files this error also will appear.

[Persistent Plants]

The above error can come up when you have an incorrect branch name, so for others facing the same issue it would be helpful to double check that.

[lesolorzanov]

Here note.yuhc.me/2015/01/git-push-error-refspec-not-match I found the ebst answer. If you just cloned the repo and it is not empty then you can push by specifying that the branch is in the HEAD like this $ git push origin HEAD:<branch>

[saber tabatabaee yazdi]

check your privilege in my case i need to check my permission i have two private git repositories and this second account is admin of that new repo and first one is my default user account and i should grant permission to first

[M Y]

Or you may wrote non-existence branch.

[Y00P]

FWIW I got this error when I tried to push to an uninitialized remote repo with no local commits done. Doing initial local commit then pushing worked.

[Harini Sj]

Recently Github/Git does not have a default "master" branch. "master" has been changed to "main" branch. So this may be a possible reason for this error.

[SaginiChan]

will you honestly just be corteous enough to accept an answer?

[Vikranth Inti]

@sinoohe, if you have only main branch, try "git push origin HEAD :main " It worked for me.

[sinoohe]

my master branch wasn't on top of commits ! so i created a branch that it was at the end of all branchs and i pushed them to the server:

[sinoohe]

git checkout -b testbranch ; git push origin testbranch:master

[James Lai]

git show-ref showed my branch; the git push origin HEAD:<branch> worked for me.

[Kumar]

Don't just follow this step blindly, look at what @Vi has mentioned, and then modify your push command to correct ref.

[shkschneider]

You just saved me Vi. Thank you for git push origin HEAD:master. But why something like git push --force origin master does not work?

[Lemmings19]

The other answers did not solve the problem I was having (for instance, I had already committed and still had this error), but doing a git push origin BRANCH --force worked. Thank you!

[Ben]

Damn, happened to me as well. Been using XCode for Git for too long and took it for granted that you need to commit before pushing.

[penner]

LOL. I was trying to push to origin master but that branch didn't exist. It was called origin stable.

[asyncwait]

@gms8994 -- you're correct. if someone creates a branch as a first thing instead of pushing into master, the same unfriendly error shows up. use git push origin <branch> instead of master in case you attempt to git checkout -b <branch> before any FIRST push after initial git remote add origin <url>

[Admin]

This probably works because git doesn't actually track directories, only files. So if a directory is empty, git won't actually add it.

[Admin]

Why did you need to use the full URL for your remote instead of just setting up an alias for it with git remote add origin <url>?

[Admin]

See this earlier answer. I suspect that you needed to add a file because git won't track empty directories.

[Mr.Chowdary]

@Vi. It worked for me, Thanks a lot.. But everytime i have to use the same command.. else showing the same error when trying to commit by git push origin master .. Please help me to overcome this..

[Vi.]

@Mr.Chowdary, You can configure the "default push location" of the branch, like in git push --set-upstream origin refs/heads/the_remote_branch. Also you can create a script or alias that will do git push origin HEAD:/refs/heads/master with little typing.

[Admin]

If you want to push your current branch, an easy way to do it is to simply do git push origin HEAD, or git push origin @ if you're using a recent version of Git, or git push origin head if you're using Windows or OS X.

[sage]

I suspect a great many of us who came here via web search actually mistyped the name!

[aug2uag]

that's correct, the business end is more specifically git remote add __REMOTE_NAME__ __URL_OR_SSH__, and above the remote name is "origin"

[Bhanu Pratap Singh]

The most probable reason for this error is that all the files are untracked and have not been added. git add --all in case you wish to add all the files Or you can selectively add files. Then git commit -m "Initial comment", git push origin master. This will surely work.

[Michael Durrant]

Fixes different issue which is nice but not really an answer to This actual question.

[Michael Durrant]

push --force could also completely blew away co-workers hard work. Added warning by it.

[Michael Durrant]

They added and committed in their question so that was not the issue even though this helps other people.

[Michael Durrant]

This answer did work however because of the -u option that was used here.

[Michael Durrant]

The OP added a file (xx.php) so this was not the problem in this case even though in other cases this can be a problem and adding a file a solution of that problem.

[Michael Durrant]

The -u may have helped here.

[Samitha Chathuranga]

Hope this post would be useful to somebody- samranga.blogspot.com/2015/07/… The error in the question can be popped even when tried to Create a git BitBucket repository from an already locally existing project

[James Wierzba]

Such a simple solution to a frustrating problem. I was testing the creation and clonining of repos and created empty directories not files.

[Anandaraja_Srinivasan]

This solved my problem. I think git add did it. While pushing things at first git doesn't recognize things, may be that's why I had the problem. git add command solved my problem. also after that i was able to push without --force. Thanks Aryo

[Jen]

Also happens if you type the name of your branch incorrectly. Typos.

[swt83]

I migrated to a new machine and was getting these errors. Setting my GIT info fixed it.

[Sunil Sharma]

What if no refs/heads/master found ??

[Vi.]

@SunilSharma, Then use some ref that is found, or explicit hex commit-id.

[Trip]

This seems to only work if I force it .. git push origin HEAD:master --force, but I still can't do a normal git push . I'm curious what I need to do to get past this original error.

[Vi.]

@Trip, Note that there is also option --force-with-lease, which is safer that usual --force, especially when you use the repository not alone.

[dance2die]

git commit -m 'initial commit' should be double quoted. 'git commit -m "initial commit", at least on windows.

[Yash Agrawal]

please do write git commit -m "initial commit"

[tanius]

In the above case, the problem is of course that there's no local branch master, so you can't push it. You either want to push an existing branch – or create the master branch and then push it, like this: git checkout -b master; git push -u origin master;

[Arno]

there has to be something to commit, you get no error if you commit an empty directory but then this error occurs when you try to push

[Sebastian Ärleryd]

I just got this when I misspelled the branch name.

[Mona Jalal]

nothing added to commit but untracked files present Monas-MacBook-Pro:02_02 mona$ git push origin master error: src refspec master does not match any. error: failed to push some refs to 'https://github.com/monajalal/jupyter_notebooks.git' didn't work for me!

[protoEvangelion]

My local branch was spelled "sheduler" and I was doing git push origin scheduler. HA! One letter off will kill you in programming. lol

[protoEvangelion]

My problem was I was misspelling the name of my local branch when pushing. I was doing git push scheduler when my local branch was named sheduler. Once I fixed the local name to say scheduler it works. HAHA :)

[cautionbug]

Thank you @GlenSolsberry - The HEAD: prefix was exactly what i needed for this problem. i have local branches that look like dev/something-or-other and the remote is just dev. Apparently git was confused about the path-like branch names, so git push <remote> HEAD:dev worked perfectly.

[CarlosAS]

Another possible reason: you don't actually have a branch called master

[Ferhat KOÇER]

No, I mean if you forget git commit -m "xxxx" command, you get the same problem.Thank you I edited my comment

[Ashley Duncan]

Not sure if I missed it in the fine print but an important point is you need to add a file to a new repo before committing.

[VIKAS KOHLI]

I checked it's working. Please ignore -u option and then try

[c4sh]

This happened to me when trying to psh a tag that didn't exist.

[Chris]

If this answer results in no results (just blank..) then if you have the same case as me, you may have just forgot to 'add' any files. So I did: 'git add --all', then 'git commit -m "initial commit"', then 'git push origin HEAD:master' to resolve.

[Rahul Mishra]

I wanted to push changes in new branch instead of master. I just changed the above mentioned code with git push -u origin HEAD:feature/random_name and that worked for me.

[old-monk]

for me it was unnecessary single quote in the branch name 'cmd-line-runnable' .. that I must have put by mistake. git show-ref helped to understand it.

[mLstudent33]

@baisong this does not work if I git remote set-url origin <my_git_repo.git> and try to git add . , git commit -m "intial commit', git push origin master

[Usman Ali Maan]

Oops! Never committed! section worked for me , i had even committed but there was some issue that's why it make error for me

[Andrew Koster]

This is what happens when you follow BitBucket's (incomplete) instructions for setting up your repo. Lol.

[Greg Wozniak]

Any chance to avoid this for Heroku? It is annoying when you often create projects to be forced to push some random file, especially that if you set-up build, heroku will reject the push. For every new project my pipeline breaks if I won't pull using cli and push. Tried git push -f heroku master:refs/heads/master and git push -f heroku HEAD:master - both don't work for the first time...

[Kewal Shah]

This also might occur if you have not added any files in the staging area. You can run git status to check which files have you staged.

[rvictordelta]

8 years later this saved me some headache!

[Peter Mortensen]

What is the limit?

[Peter Mortensen]

Re "skipped": Do you mean "escaped"?

[Peter Mortensen]

What is "fastlane match nuke development", etc.? Some kind of weird Git client?

[blackjacx]

Nope, in fact fastlane match nuke development deletes the development certificates and profiles from the git credential store and the Developer Portal (I edited my answer).

[Kodali444]

In my case, 1--> git init 2---> git add origin....etc 3---> git git push -u origin master ===>Then I got the above error. ===>Then I executed following 2 commands, it's disappear. ---> git add * ---> git commit -m "Some message" --->git git push -u origin master ===>Worked fine for me, in my case.

[Andrew E]

@rao yep, adding an origin isn't enough, you must add and commit files. But why do you have "git git push..."? Is the second "git" a typo?

[ZX9]

The issue here seems to be completely different than the OP's...but it seems many including me had this issue.

[Kodali444]

Yes it's a typo. Thank you

[pedram bashiri]

How is this the error in question related to .gitignore?! If it is related (which I highly doubt) you should explain it in your answer. Thanks

[Abdallah Abdillah]

did you mean ` git add --all` with two dashes

[Taha Farooqui]

Perfect answer !!

[M Y]

Or you may wrote non-existence branch.

[Pyae]

Had the same problem and it turn out that I typo branch name.

[Napster Scofield]

I forgot to commit then ran to this. JUST COMMIT

[aahnik]

Even that failed. My local branch was master. I created a main locally and then push worked with -u flag

[vishwampandya]

Thanks a lot. It worked. This was really a major recent update by github

[Vishnu]

I see that a few people are downvoting this answer. Just to be clear, I came across this question when I got the same error when pushing my changes to the master branch. On further reading, I got to know that GitHub has changed master to main and I just wanted people to know about it and that was the reason for this answer.

[Joseph Brenner]

I think you mean "main" not "live". As of June 2020 they've dropped "master" in favor of "main.

[Joseph Brenner]

As CarlosAS has pointed out, you can get this error if there's no branch "master", and that's actually a common case right now, because as of June 2020 github has stopped using branches named "master" in favor of "main".

[Jboy Flaga]

Hi @JosephBrenner, I already removed the reference to Github.

[Aaditya Ura]

master is changed to main now.

[zinovyev]

That is valid only for new repositories. So this answer is completely inaccurate. More info here: github.com/github/renaming

[SaltyCatFish]

I don't think its inaccurate at all. I came here because I received the same error message. The error happened to be that "master" was changed to "main" on the remote side and I never updated the remote URL.

[Hileamlak Yitayew]

I am getting the opposit , I have seen that my default is main but when I try men I get error what do you think I should do

[Ayush Jain]

As far as I could understand, this is because you haven't created any branch named men. If you want a branch named men you can use git checkout -b men and then you would be able to push this branch to remote.

[saber tabatabaee yazdi]

github rename the master with main. so you can use git remote origin main

[Jacobs2000]

Tried this solution and got refs/heads/master. Then git push origin master worked.

[Heath]

Thanks, this was also a recent update for gitlab, just in case anyone was wondering.

[gridtrak]

git --version 2.29.1.windows.1 switched from "master" to "main". My GOGS server's templates still use "master". After initializing my repository locally, all I need to do is git push -u origin main instead of git push -u origin master

[ultrasounder]

The original announcement from GH CEO Nat Friedman on Twitter in response to the #BLM Movement. twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1271253144442253312

[Kinyugo]

I ran into this and the problem was I hadn't set my branch git branch -M <branch_name>

[Mehdi Abbassi]

I did commit, but when I try to push my commit to the main branch, which is now the default branch in GitHub, I get this error. If I push to master, there is no error, but then I have two branches in my GitHub!

[Kale]

I gave a similar answer that helped me on this question: stackoverflow.com/a/66737426/5996491

[Rafiq]

giving initial commit solved my problem: git commit -a -m"commit message"

[zac]

master instead of main solve me problem

[Karen Goh]

I tried your method but still getting error: src refspec master does not match any

[froggomad]

Glad I wasn't the only one

[sailfish009]

Thanks, this works for me. other solutions didn't.

[Stefan]

Run git add . then git commit -m "first commit", then push again

[yasnil]

putting the HEAD: before the remote branch name worked like a magic.

[iifast]

I also recommand watching this tutorial : youtu.be/yZdmcMQkQRo

[Balasubramanian S]

This was my problem. Tried so many things and then realized it was main instead of master.

[Admin]

this is the only one that actually worked.

[Promise Preston]

Exactly. This was the issue for me. I was trying to push to a dev branch from my local that does not exist yet on my local. I was in the main branch, so I had to do git checkout -b dev and then git push origin dev. Thank you.

[boardtc]

I did not get a Gerrit url to indicate the patch was updated but it was!

[Vintage Coder]

Github now changed git push origin master to git push origin main

[east1000]

This does not really answer the question. If you have a different question, you can ask it by clicking Ask Question. To get notified when this question gets new answers, you can follow this question. Once you have enough reputation, you can also add a bounty to draw more attention to this question. - From Review

[Arya Mohanan]

I don't know why you guys said like the answer is not valid, recently I had faced the same issue as mentioned the question and resolved by the changing the branch. Just posted here to help others who go through the same problem

[Po-Yu Kao]

Thanks for your help. It is really helpful.

[Tora Tora Tora]

git branch -M main worked for me.

[fiorentinoing]

An other reason is that you have no complete repo, but only a shallow one. (i.e., you cloned with --depth=1 flag or something similar)

[Harish]

I got the same issue and realized that branch was on main. then I followed this and got resolved.

[iownthegame]

this saves my day!!! I mixed it up with main and master

[Lucas]

What’s git *create remote?

[mustafa hasria]

What about if it doesn't shown anything

[Johnny Bravo]

Thanks, I was missing the ignore document.

[Andy]

same here. Thanks!

[Sunderam Dubey]

push is always done on that branch which is selected.

[Panama Jack]

This git branch -M main is important which is why it wasn't working for me. It expects master if you don't put anything.