Git cannot checkout branch - error pathspec did not match any file s known to git

Question

I m not sure why I m unable to checkout a branch that I had worked on earlier  See the commands below  note  co is an alias for checkout    ramon ramon-desktop   source unstilted  git branch -a   develop   feature datts right   feature user controlled menu   feature user controlled site layouts   master   remotes origin HEAD - gt  origin master   remotes origin develop   remotes origin feature datts right   remotes origin master ramon ramon-desktop   source unstilted  git co feature user controlled site layouts  error  pathspec  feature user controlled site layouts  did not match any file s  known to git    I m not sure what it means  and I can t seem to find anything I can understand on Google    How do I checkout that branch  and what may I have done to break this   UPDATE   I found this post  and running git show-ref gives me   97e2cb33914e763ff92bbe38531d3fd02408da46 refs heads develop c438c439c66da3f2356d2449505c073549b221c1 refs heads feature datts right 11a90dae8897ceed318700b9af3019f4b4dceb1e refs heads feature user controlled menu c889b37a5ee690986935c9c74b71999e2cf3c6d7 refs heads master c889b37a5ee690986935c9c74b71999e2cf3c6d7 refs remotes origin HEAD e7c17eb40610505eea4e6687e4572191216ad4c6 refs remotes origin develop c438c439c66da3f2356d2449505c073549b221c1 refs remotes origin feature datts right c889b37a5ee690986935c9c74b71999e2cf3c6d7 refs remotes origin master 23768aa5425cbf29d10ff24274adad42d90d15cc refs stash e572cf91e95da03f04a5e51820f58a7306ce01de refs tags menu shows published only 429ebaa895d9d41d835a34da72676caa75902e3d refs tags slow dev   UPDATE on  git directory  user controlled site layouts is in the refs heads feature folder      ls  git refs heads feature  datts right  user controlled menu  user controlled site layouts   cat  git refs heads feature user controlled site layouts 3af84fcf1508c44013844dcd0998a14e61455034   UPDATE on git show 3af84fcf1508c44013844dcd0998a14e61455034    git show 3af84fcf1508c44013844dcd0998a14e61455034 commit 3af84fcf1508c44013844dcd0998a14e61455034 Author  Ramon Tayag  lt xxx xxxxx xxx gt  Date    Thu May 12 19 00 03 2011  0800      Removed site layouts migration  diff --git a db schema rb b db schema rb index 1218fc8  2040b9f 100755 --- a db schema rb     b db schema rb    -10 7  10 7          It s strongly recommended to check this file into your version control system   -ActiveRecord  Schema define  version   gt  20110511012647  do  ActiveRecord  Schema define  version   gt  20110503040056  do     create table  attachments    force   gt  true do  t       t string    name     -205 15  205 6    ActiveRecord  Schema define  version   gt  20110511012647  do      t integer   old id     end  -  create table  site layouts    force   gt  true do  t  -    t string    name  -    t text      description  -    t text      content  -    t integer   site id  -    t datetime  created at  -    t datetime  updated at  -  end -    create table  site styles    force   gt  true do  t       t text      published       t datetime  created at

User · Answer

I have the same error in my case  git checkout master error  pathspec  master  did not match any file s  known to git  Since Git s  quot master quot  name updated with  quot main quot   new project can only use  quot main quot   git checkout main

User · Answer

I got this error for a branch that was remote and had no local tracking branch  Even though I m certain I ve checked out remote branches via a simple  git checkout feature foo   in the past  to get around this error I had to  git checkout -t -b feature foo origin feature foo   I have no idea what I did to get myself into that situation either

User · Answer

First  checkout parent branch Then type  git fetch --all --prune  git checkout  lt your branch gt    Hope it helps

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I had this problem when working with Git on Windows  In my case  it was a case issue  I had already added and committed a file to my repository and later changed only its case   To solve the problem  I renamed the file to match the original case and rename it again with the git mv command  Appearently  this lets git track the rename   Note  I was using Cygwin

User · Answer

I got this when I did the following    Used IntelliJ IDE  connected to git Created a new file  and added to git Renamed the new file   When I tried to check in the directory  I got this error   To fix   I opened the repo in git extensions  I saw that the file  with the old name  was staged  But since it didnt exist anymore  it could not be committed   I simply unstaged this file    Then I re-added the file  this time correctly named  into git and committed without errors

User · Answer

Try git fetch so that your local repository gets all the new info from github  It just takes the information about new branches and no actual code  After that the git checkout should work fine

User · Answer

Alright  there are too many answers already  But in my case  I faced this issue while I was working on Eclipse and using git-bash to switch between branches checkouts  Once I closed the eclipse and relaunched the git-bash to checkout branch everything worked well   So my suggestion for you to double check if your repository is not being used by another application

User · Answer

Git Windows users beware - without the --icase-pathspecs or GIT ICASE PATHSPECS   1 env var setting  that git pathspecs will be case-sensitive  in which case   git checkout origin FooBranch  Some Path To File txt    is not the same as   git checkout origin FooBranch  some path to file Txt

User · Answer

git pull   That simply fixed it for me

User · Answer

If you deleted a branch with git branch -D yourbranchname and pulled cloned again your repo  you may need to create your local branch again    Try    git checkout -b yourbranchname

User · Answer

This worked for me  It discards all local changes and resets it to the last commit   git reset --hard

User · Answer

I my case I run  git fetch  before  git branch       but obtained the same error  Then I analyzed it and found error in my branch name  Fixed it and switch to branch successfully

User · Answer

I got this in Github desk top after clicking  Update from     when the wrong repo was selected  I then changed repo to the correct one but when I tried to remove changes I got this error  That s because these were new files in the repo I errantly selected but not in the one I wanted to update from   I simply changed the repo selector back to the one I incorrectly selected the first time then I was able to remove the changes   Then I changed the repo selector to the one I wanted

User · Answer

Well  I had few deleted branches like dev  feature branch  and when I created a new branch dev and tried to checkout  I was getting the same issue  I ran the below command git fetch -p  and worked for me

User · Answer

I had the same issue   I thought I had branch named foo when I try to   git checkout foo   I was getting   error  pathspec  foo  did not match any file s  known to git    Then I tried the full branch name   git checkout feature foo   then worked for me

User · Answer

I was getting the same pathspec error on git-bash  I used Tortoise git on windows to switch checkout the branch

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This happened to me as well on Windows on two local branches I created myself   Once out of the branch  I was not able to checkout   bugfix  303 multiline opmerkingen not displaying correctly in viewer   nor     bugfix 339 hidden fields still validated  you can see in the screenshot from Git bash below      When I tried using Git GUI  I wasn t even able to see the branches at all  However when I used Pycharms git tool  I saw this     So for some reason windows decided to add some indecipherable character to my branch names and that is the reason it didn t work  Renaming the branches in Pycharm did the trick  so guess this would work on other IDEs as well

User · Answer

check whether it is not a typo in the target file name  I was attempting to stage by typing   git add includes connection  php   But I did not notice that I was using two dots  But then I type   git add includes connection php   It works

User · Answer

I got the same problem because I used git clone --depth 1  which implies --single-branch   Do a completed git clone will fix it

User · Answer

Happened to me after renaming an uncommitted file in Android Studio   Git seemed to have the old version in its repository  even if it didn  t exist anymore   fetch  pull  checkout  add all and so on did not help in my case    So I opened the Git GUI of TortoiseGit which showed me the exact file that caused trouble   Afterwards I deleted the file from the repository with  git rm -r --cached  path to affected file   and the problem was gone

User · Answer

I faced the issue while switching my branch    I did a git pull on the current branch and then tried to checkout the new one and it worked  git pull    on your old branch git checkout  lt new branch gt

User · Answer

I had a different root cause  I had a script that basically searches all branches matching jira issue key in the for  PRJ-1234  among all branches to execute a git branch checkout command on the matching branch  The problem in my case was 2 or more branches shared the same jira key and hence caused my script to fail with the aforementioned error  By deleting the old unused branch and making sure only a single branch had the jira key reference fixed the problem  Here s my code in case someone wants to use it  git remote update git fetch --all --prune  git branch -r --list   1    xargs git checkout --force   save this as switchbranch sh  Then use it from the terminal   switchbranch sh PRJ-1234

User · Answer

I faced this issue when I tried to checkout using specific tag but the tag value was incorrect  Here s an example how easy it can be  git github com user reponame ref 1 0 0  this was incorrect and below is the correct one  note v before the version name   git github com user reponame ref v1 0 0  If you re not familiar with all those tiny details it s really easy to omit them

User · Answer

For me  it was a problem with my credentials    After trying some of the answer  one of them helped me to solve the problem   Running git fetch threw the following error      Could not resolve host  bitbucket org   All I had to do was force my IDE  VS Code in my case  to remember my credentials   git config --global credential helper wincred   Git immediately synched all the changes  and git checkout  lt branche gt  works fine now

User · Answer

If you re on Windows you just probably change filename to lower upper case like File txt - file txt  So check what file you have in git and rename it to what you want   git status   Then I need file txt -  but git status gaves me File txt so just rename it  git mv File txt file txt   And problem is solved

User · Answer

This can be caused when upstream rewrites history   When this happens  I toss all affected repos  clone them fresh from upstream  and use  git format-patch     git am  to ferry any work in progress from old world to new

User · Answer

None of these answers solved my issue   Nikolai CALIGARI-7   Documents NetBeansProjects Version  master    git log --format oneline b9cc6a9078312865280fb5432a43e17eff03a5c6 Formatted README 288772f36befe6bd60dd41b8185f1e24e0119668 Updated README documentation d2bdbe18f4169358d46fad50eacfb89786df3bf8 Version object v3 0 0-SNAPSHOT a46b1910a3f548b4fa254a6055d25f68d3f217dd VersionFactory is now Platform agnostic 24179ae569ec7bd28311389c0a7a85ea7b4f9594 Added internal Platform abstraction 252b684417cf4edd71aed43a15da2c8a59c629a7 Added IPlugin implementation for Sponge e3f8d21d6cf61ee4fc806791689c984c149b45e3 Added IPlugin implementation for Bukkit aeb403914310b4b10dee9e980cf64472e2bfda79 Refactored Version java ef50efcff700c6438d57f70fac30846de2747a7e Refactored TesterFactory a20808065878d4d28657ae362235c837cfa8e625 Added IPlugin abstraction 9712a3575a70060d7ecea8b62bb5e888fdc32d07 Heavily refactored Tester 02d025788ae740dbfe3ef76a132cea8ca4e47467 Added generic Predicate lt T gt  interface 9c565777abea9be6767dfdab4ab94ed1173750dd Minor refactoring of testCompareTo   2ff2a28c221681e256dcff28770782736d3a796a Version object v2 0 1 d4b2e2bd830f77cdbc2297112c2e46b6555d4393 Fix compareTo   05fe7e012b07d1a5b8de29804f96d9a6b24229a1 Make compareTo   fail 6e85371414357a41c1fc0cec0e75adba92f96832 Fix VersionFactory passing null c1fd1f032f87d860d5ed9d6f6679c9fa522cff8d Version object v2 0 62c3a92c008a2ed11f0a4d016080afc3541d0700 Version object v1 2 c42e9e617128085e872c51b4d977a04e48d69e8f Deprecated  doc d  future-proofed getNm   Nikolai CALIGARI-7   Documents NetBeansProjects Version  master    git checkout 3a796a error  pathspec  3a796a  did not match any file s  known to git    I was trying to go back and build the commit for Version object v2 0 1  Luckily  I got the idea to try the whole hash code and it worked   Which means that I was using the wrong end of the hash code   Nikolai CALIGARI-7   Documents NetBeansProjects Version  master    git checkout 2ff2a Note  checking out  2ff2a    You are in  detached HEAD  state  You can look around  make experimental changes and commit them  and you can discard any commits you make in this state without impacting any branches by performing another checkout   If you want to create a new branch to retain commits you create  you may do so  now or later  by using -b with the checkout command again  Example     git checkout -b new branch name  HEAD is now at 2ff2a28    Version object v2 0 1  Nikolai CALIGARI-7   Documents NetBeansProjects Version   2ff2a28          As shown above  for partial hash codes  you must supply the front-end  not the back-end

User · Answer

Such a problem arise when you try to get branch your local git doesn t know  First git remote add origin yourremotegitrepository  After git fetch   you should get all remote branches    git checkout branchname  That is all

User · Answer

I had made a silly mistake of not providing -m flag while committing  lol happens   git commit -m  commit message in here

User · Answer

I had this problem today I was trying to git checkout foo and got error  pathspec  foo  did not match any file s  known to git    It turns out I was in the wrong repo  So lesson learned  check which repo you re looking at before freaking out

User · Answer

I had the same issue for one of my branch  These commands work for me  git fetch --all git checkout  lt branch-name gt

User · Answer

I have the same questions  and got some information from this link  git fetch doesn t fetch all branches So now  I may not sure how this situation happened  at least we can solve it  Step 1  Check your  quot remote origin fetch quot  setting  should be like this    git config --get remote origin fetch  refs heads private dev branch refs remotes origin private dev branch  Step 2  Change  quot remote origin fetch quot  to fetch everything    git config remote origin fetch  quot  refs heads   refs remotes origin   quot    git config --get remote origin fetch  refs heads   refs remotes origin    Then  you can try  quot git pull quot   maybe  quot git fetch origin quot  also works but I didn t try  to get all the branch

User · Answer

I faced a similar issue  What led me into this trouble was  I had multiple remote branches and I deleted the folder that had the code  I did a get pull      git pull git git corp         Then I added remote repository     git remote add upstream git git corp          Then I tried to change branch to some other branch say AAAA and I got error  error  pathspec  AAAA  did not match any file s  known to git    After spending an hour I found a solution  I deleted the source folder again  Then I did a git pull    git pull git git corp         Then I changed branch before linking it to remote repository     git checkout AAA   then I added it to remote repository  git remote add upstream git git corp         After this I can easily switch branches  Although this is not a standard way but it worked for me after I tried all of above options

User · Answer

I was getting this error when I tried to checkout new branch      error  pathspec  BRANCH-NAME  did not match any file s  known to git    When I tried git checkout origin  lt BRANCH-NAME gt   I got the detached HEAD        detached from origin     Finally  I did the following to resolve the issue   git remote update git fetch  git checkout --track origin  lt BRANCH-NAME gt

User · Answer

I had the same problem  with a version of git-recent  and discovered it was to do with color escape codes used by git   I wonder whether this could explain why this problem is occurring so commonly   This is demonstrates what could be happening  though color is normally set in git configuration rather than the command line  otherwise it s effect would be obvious      dev trunk  master   git checkout  git branch -l  --color always    grep django-1 11  error  pathspec  django-1 11  did not match any file s  known to git    dev trunk  master   git branch -l  --color always    grep django-1 11   django-1 11   dev trunk  master   git checkout  git branch -l    grep django-1 11  Switched to branch  django-1 11  Your branch is up-to-date with  gerrit django-1 11     dev trunk  django-1 11      I figure a git config that doesn t play with the color settings should work color auto should do the right thing  My particular issue was because the git recent I was using was defined as an alias with hard coded colors  and I was trying to build commands on top of that

User · Answer

I copied remote origin url from another  git config file  doing so my new  git config file was missing following line in  remote  origin   section  fetch    refs heads   refs remotes origin     Adding above line fixed error  pathspec  master  did not match any file s  known to git

User · Answer

If it happens on Windows  it is probably the filename case issue    I had this error today - I ve created new file  added to GIT  then I changed one letter in filename from lower to upper and then I couldn t to anything - commit  revert  delete file from repo    The only solution I found was changing the filename again back to exact same case when I added this file to GIT  then doing GIT revert to remove this file from GIT  then changing filename again as I want  After those changes I could commit to repo and then push without any problem

User · Answer

In my case I have TWO branch 1  master which is for live server  2  dev test server   I had set multiple remote to push code on respective server  When I tried to switch branch I got the error like error  pathspec  master  did not match any file s  known to git   You can see them by git remote -v  I had removed other remote except origin remote by git remote remove  lt remote-name gt   Then git fetch  Now I am able to checkout branch by git checkout  lt branch-name gt

User · Answer

Since your feature branch exists in remote  it s your local repo that s corrupted  So  delete your local repo and re-clone  Now  git checkout  lt branch name gt   should work for you

User · Answer

Three steps    Write a command  git fetch  then you will see the desired branch then switch to the relevant branch  git checkout  your branch name  then write a command  git pull origin your desired branch name

User · Answer

I got this error when trying to checkout a branch via   git checkout branchX   which I had not checked out before  It only worked when explicitly stating the remote   git checkout --track origin branchX   The reason for this was  that I had 2 different remotes  origin   sth  else  configured in git config  As I didn t need the second remote  I removed it and voil    it worked  The alternative to set the default remote via   checkout defaultRemote origin   did not work for me

User · Answer

I fixed it by modifying my git config file Check your the config file in your git directory -  git config  It previously had    remote  origin   url   http   git xyz com abc-group pqr git fetch    refs heads develop refs remotes origin develop   I fixed by modifying it to   remote  origin   url   http   git xyz com abc-group pqr git fetch    refs heads   refs remotes origin     Notice the head was pointing to only one branch  so it couldnt find the reference to other existing branches  I changed it to   so it checks everything in origin

User · Answer

I was getting the same error because I was checking out the branch that was not existing   So we need to make sure that the branch that we are checking out exists in the repository

User · Answer

Here is how I solved my error   First I deleted my repo locally and also from my Github  Then I forked and cloned to my local repository    After that  I made my change to it and finally   Created My branch using   git checkout -b moh branch  change working branch    git checkout moh branch  push the branch to GitHub   git push origin moh branch  After that  I am able to commit my change as follow -   git add     git commit -m  updated readme md    git push origin moh branch  Succeeded 100  for me

User · Answer

If branch name and you dont have any uncommited file  then try this  git fetch  amp  amp  git checkout  lt branch name gt

User · Answer

I encountered this same issue when I was first playing around with git  When attempting my first commit     git commit -m  first commit     I got the error mentioned by the OP     error  pathspec  commit    did not match any file s  known to git    I thought I might have been confusing git by using a keyword in the commit message  so I tried a few other words and received the same error   Finally I used double-quotes in the message     git commit -m  first commit     This turned out to be successful      master  root commit  0000000  first commit  1 file changed  0 insertions     0 deletions -  create mode 100644 dummyDoc txt

User · Answer

in my case I enter submodule directory without doing    git submodule init  git submodule update   So git was linked to the parent folder that indeed missed that branch

User · Answer

cat  git refs heads feature user controlled site layouts 3af84fcf1508c44013844dcd0998a14e61455034   Can you confirm that the following works     git show 3af84fcf1508c44013844dcd0998a14e61455034   It could be the case that someone has rewritten the history and that this commit no longer exists  for whatever reason really

User · Answer

On Windows OS by default git is instaled with   core ignorecase   true   This means that git repo files will be case insensitive  to change this you need to execute    yourLocalRepo gt  git config core ignorecase false   you can find this configuration on  git config file

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In my case I had renamed a file changing the case of the file  i e     SomeFile js -  someFile js  I think that was related to the problem   Doing a git fetch didn t fix the issue   I moved the files out of my project  did a fetch  and did a push without them   Then I did a fetch  added them back  and did a push  and it worked   I don t know if all those steps were needed  but it did ultimately work

User · Answer

I faced this problem last time  and the thing I have done is remove the folder  or source code  related to that branch   Ex  the branch origin foo create folder foo at your local  so I just delete it and use git fetch   checkout to get code back from remote   Or you can do it by create folder at local same as the branch you intended to checkout   Ex  create folder foo at local  after that  use Git command  git branch --set-upstream-to origin foo foo  that all  Use git pull to get code

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One possible reason  If you are working on windows machine with MINGW   ISSUE   Check the branch name you want to checkout Windows omits character   from branch name while parsing command   for example   if you have a branch name like bugfix some- branch -name  When you issue command    gt  git checkout bugfix some- branch -name it will parse it as bugfix some-branch-name  notice it omits   character   REMEDY   To checkout this kind of branch name  add escape character while issuing command   Type    gt  git checkout bugfix some-  branch  -name  It shoud work then

[git] Git: cannot checkout branch - error: pathspec '...' did not match any file(s) known to git

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