git pull remote branch cannot find remote ref

I'm not sure why this doesn't work. When I do git branch -a, this is what I see:

I'm trying to pull from the DownloadManager on the online GitHub repository. I have tried

• git pull, but then it complains about not knowing which branch to pull from
• git pull origin, doesn't know which branch
• git pull origin downloadmanager fatal: Couldn't find remote ref downloadmanager. Unexpected end of commands stream
• git pull origin remotes/origin/DownloadManager 'fatal couldn't find remote ref remotes/origin/DownloadManager. Unexpected end of commands stream

Is there something I'm missing? In Xcode, When I try to connect to the repository, nothing ever shows up. I have been able to push to it in the past. But I can't push again until I pull the most recent changes.

17 Answers

Be careful - you have case mixing between local and remote branch!

Suppose you are in local branch downloadmanager now (git checkout downloadmanager)

You have next options:

1. Specify remote branch in pull/push commands every time (case sensitive):

   git pull origin DownloadManager

   or

   git pull origin downloadmanager:DownloadManager

2. Specify tracking branch on next push:

   git push -u origin DownloadManager

   (-u is a short form of --set-upstream)

   this will persist downloadmanager:DownloadManager link in config automatically (same result, as the next step).

3. Set in git config default remote tracking branch:

   git branch -u downloadmanager origin/DownloadManager

   (note, since git 1.8 for branch command -u is a short form of --set-upstream-to, which is a bit different from deprecated --set-upstream)

   or edit config manually (I prefer this way):

   git config --local -e

   -> This will open editor. Add block below (guess, after "master" block):

   [branch "downloadmanager"] remote = origin merge = refs/heads/DownloadManager 

and after any of those steps you can use easily:

git pull

If you use TortoiseGit: RightClick on repo -> TortoiseGit -> Settings -> Git -> Edit local .git/config

This error happens because of local repository can't identify the remote branch at first time. So you need to do it first. It can be done using following commands:

git remote add origin 'url_of_your_github_project' git push -u origin master 

If none of these answers work, I would start by looking in your .git/config file for references to the branch that makes problems, and removing them.

I faced the same issue because GitHub changed the default branch name from master to main so git pull origin master did not work for me.

try this
git pull origin main If the issue is due to a branch name conflict, this will save you.

The branch name in Git is case sensitive. To see the names of your branches that Git 'sees' (including the correct casing), use:

git branch -vv 

... and now that you can see the correct branch name to use, do this:

git pull origin BranchName 

where 'BranchName' is the name of your branch. Ensure that you match the case correctly

So in the OP's (Original Poster's) case, the command would be:

git pull origin DownloadManager 

If the remote branch was deleted (or renamed), then you might get such error when trying to fetch that old-branch:

$ git fetch --prune --all Fetching origin fatal: couldn't find remote ref refs/heads/old-branch error: Could not fetch origin 

Check your local git config if it still refers to the old-branch:

 $ git config --get-all remote.origin.fetch +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/* +refs/heads/old-branch:refs/remotes/origin/old-branch +refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/origin/master 

Removing the old refs entries, can fix the fetch problem:

$ git config --unset-all remote.origin.fetch $ git fetch --prune --all Fetching origin ... * branch HEAD -> FETCH_HEAD 

For me, it was because I was trying to pull a branch which was already deleted from Github.

In my case, this error occurred due to the naming changes made by Github for the default branch from master to main

So instead of using,

git pull origin master 

You may use,

git pull origin main 

check your branch on your repo. maybe someone delete it.

You need to set your local branch to track the remote branch, which it won't do automatically if they have different capitalizations.

Try:

git branch --set-upstream downloadmanager origin/DownloadManager git pull 

UPDATE:

'--set-upstream' option is no longer supported.

git branch --set-upstream-to downloadmanager origin/DownloadManager git pull 

This is because your remote branch name is "DownloadManager“, I guess when you checkout your branch, you give this branch a new name "downloadmanager".

But this is just your local name, not remote ref name.

For me it was failing because my remote branch was missing (it was deleted on previous merge run.)

In my case I had got the capitalisation wrong on the branch ABC-100 when I did git checkout abc-100 which I then worked on. My solution was to merge code from abc-100 into ABC-100 and then delete abc-100.

In my case I had a branch in my local branches that was removed from the server

just remove it from the local branches and pull will works as expected

The problem occured for me because (I think) someone tried to clone a repository from a folder on our server into the same folder. This created a ".git" folder in the repository I tried to clone and broke everything. Deleting the ".git" folder in the repo I wanted to clone fixed it.

I had this issue when after rebooted and the last copy of VSCode reopened. The above fix did not work, but when I closed and reopened VSCode via explorer it worked. Here are the steps I did:

//received fatal error git remote remove origin git init git remote add origin git@github:<yoursite>/<your project>.git // still received an err //restarted VSCode and folder via IE //updated one char and resaved the index.html git add . git commit -m "blah" git push origin master

In my own case, I just made the change from "master" to "main" and I was able to pull from the remote repo.