[git] Your configuration specifies to merge with the <branch name> from the remote, but no such ref was fetched.?

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 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 )

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Just check if someone deleted the branch at remote.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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