fatal bad default revision HEAD

Question

I m using GIT as my source control system  We have it installed on one of our Linux boxes  Tortoise GIT is my windows client   This morning I checked in some changes  and tagged the code  I then did a push of my local repository to the remote repository   When I go to my repository on the unix box and type in git log I get   fatal  bad default revision  HEAD    But when I do a show log using my windows tortoiseGit client the history comes up nicely as per below     --- SHA-1  f879573ba3d8e62089b8c673257c928779f71692  Initial drop of code  --- master origin master oms-phase4-v1 0 0 SHA-1  56176dbe45e6175b18c9f44533828806c63142ab  OMS Phase 4 - Added OMS Cust  Order No  to EDI Purchase Order Header screens  Tag Info  object 56176dbe45e6175b18c9f44533828806c63142ab type commit tag oms-phase4-v1 0 0 tagger Richard Riviere  lt richard riviere myer com au gt  1364338495  1100  --- SHA-1  0000000000000000000000000000000000000000  Working dir changes 0 files changed  ---   The code has definitely been pushed to the remote repository  I ve been able to check by cloning the repository into a different directory   Does anyone know why I am receiving the fatal  bad default revision  HEAD    p s  It is a bare repository however I have created other bare repositories which have not had this problem

User · Answer

This happens to me when the branch I m working in gets deleted from the repository  but the workspace I m in is not updated   We have a tool that lets you create multiple git  workspaces  from the same repository using simlinks    If git branch does not mark any branch as current  try doing  git reset --hard  lt  lt some branch gt  gt    I tried a number of approaches until I worked this one out

User · Answer

I don t think this is OP s problem  but if you re like me  you ran into this error while you were trying to play around with git plumbing commands  update-index  amp  cat-file  without ever actually committing anything in the first place  So try committing something  git commit -am  First commit   and your problem should be solved

User · Answer

Make sure branch  master  exists  It s not just a name apparently   I got this error after creating a blank bare repo  pushing a branch named  dev  to it  and trying to use git log in the bare repo  Interestingly  git branch knows that dev is the only branch existing  so I think this is a git bug    Solution  I repeated the procedure  this time having renamed  dev  to  master  on the working repo before pushing to the bare repo  Success

User · Answer

just do an initial commit and the error will go away   git commit -m  initial commit

User · Answer

Note  Git 2 6  Q3 Q4 2015  will finally provide a more meaningful error message   See commit ce11360  29 Aug 2015  by Jeff King  peff    Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 699a0f3  02 Sep 2015        log  diagnose empty HEAD more clearly      If you init or clone an empty repository  the initial message from running  git log  is not very friendly      git init Initialized empty Git repository in  home peff foo  git    git log fatal  bad default revision  HEAD       Let s detect this situation and write a more friendly message      git log fatal  your current branch  master  does not have any commits yet      We also detect the case that  HEAD  points to a broken ref  this should be even less common  but is easy to see    Note that we do not diagnose all possible cases  We rely on resolve ref  which means we do not get information about complex cases  E g    --default master  would use dwim ref to find  refs heads master   but we notice only that  master  does not exist    Similarly  a complex sha1 expression like  --default HEAD 2  will not resolve as a ref       But that s OK  We fall back to a generic error message in those cases  and they are unlikely to be used anyway    Catching an empty or broken  HEAD  improves the common case  and the other cases are not regressed

User · Answer

I got the same error and couldn t solve it   Then I noticed 3 extra files in one of my directories   The files were named   config  HEAD  description   I deleted the files  and the error didn t appear   config contained    core      repositoryformatversion   0     filemode   true     bare   true   HEAD contained   ref  refs heads master   description contained   Unnamed repository  edit this file  description  to name the repository

User · Answer

Your repo is yours  what goes on in it is entirely your business until you push or  allow a  fetch or clone  When you deleted your windows repo -- that folder didn t represent your local repo  it was your actual local repo  you deleted everything done in it that was never pushed  fetched or cloned   edit   Ah  okay  I think I see what s going on here  you pushed to your linux repo but it s not bare and you never worked in it   Instead of git log  do git log --all   Or git checkoutsome-branch-name     Then try cloning the repo locally  on your linux box  I bet it works  What are you using to serve your repo on linux   Try cd ing into its  git directory and git daemon --base-path   --export-all  if that just sits there then go to your windows box and try git clone git   your linux box ip  if the daemon complains it can t bind add --port 54345 to the daemon invoke and  54345 to the clone url

User · Answer

Not committed yet   It is a orphan branch if it has no commit

User · Answer

This seems to occur when  git HEAD refers to a branch which does not exist  I ran into this error in a repo that had nothing in  git refs heads  I have no idea how the repo got into that state  I inherited from someone that left the company

[git] fatal: bad default revision 'HEAD'

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