git pull remote branch cannot find remote ref

Question

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

User · Accepted Answer

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    Specify remote branch in pull push commands every time  case sensitive    git pull origin DownloadManager  or   git pull origin downloadmanager DownloadManager      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            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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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    x000D   x000D    received fatal error x000D  git remote remove origin x000D  git init x000D  git remote add origin git github  lt yoursite gt   lt your project gt  git x000D     still received an err  x000D    restarted VSCode and folder via IE  x000D    updated one char and resaved the index html   x000D  git add   x000D  git commit -m  blah  x000D  git push origin master x000D   x000D   x000D

User · Answer

check your branch on your repo  maybe someone delete it

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

This error happens because the 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

[git] git pull remote branch cannot find remote ref

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