git rebase fatal Needed a single revision

Question

I have a branch of a public repository and I am trying to update my branch with the current commits from the original repository     git fetch  lt remote gt  remote  Counting objects  24  done  remote  Compressing objects  100   20 20   done  remote  Total 20  delta 12   reused 0  delta 0  Unpacking objects  100   20 20   done  From git   github com path to repo   9b70165  22127d0  master     - gt    master   git rebase  lt remote gt  fatal  Needed a single revision invalid upstream  lt remote gt    The  lt remote gt  is in place of my remote name and is not actually my remote name  The documentation on this error seems to be a bit loose

User · Answer

The issue is that you branched off a branch off of.... where you are trying to rebase to. You can't rebase to a branch that does not contain the commit your current branch was originally created on.

I got this when I first rebased a local branch X to a pushed one Y, then tried to rebase a branch (first created on X) to the pushed one Y.

Solved for me by rebasing to X.

I have no problem rebasing to remote branches (potentially not even checked out), provided my current branch stems from an ancestor of that branch.

User · Answer

You need to provide the name of a branch  or other commit identifier   not the name of a remote to git rebase   E g    git rebase origin master   not   git rebase origin   Note  although origin should resolve to the the ref origin HEAD when used as an argument where a commit reference is required  it seems that not every repository gains such a reference so it may not  and in your case doesn t  work  It pays to be explicit

User · Answer

The error occurs when your repository does not have the default branch set for the remote  You can use the git remote set-head command to modify the default branch  and thus be able to use the remote name instead of a specified branch in that remote  To query the remote  in this case origin  for its HEAD  typically master   and set that as the default branch    git remote set-head origin --auto  If you want to use a different default remote branch locally  you can specify that branch    git remote set-head origin new-default  Once the default branch is set  you can use just the remote name in git rebase  lt remote gt  and any other commands instead of explicit  lt remote gt   lt branch gt   Behind the scenes  this command updates the reference in  git refs remotes origin HEAD    cat  git refs remotes origin HEAD  ref  refs remotes origin master  See the git-remote man page for further details

User · Answer

I ran into this and realized I didn t fetch the upstream before trying to rebase   All I needed was to git fetch upstream

User · Answer

git submodule deinit --all -f worked for me

User · Answer

Check that you spelled the branch name correctly  I was rebasing a story branch  i e  branch name  and forgot the story part   i e  story branch name  and then git spit this error at me which didn t make much sense in this context

[git] git rebase fatal: Needed a single revision

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