There are quite a few reasons Git throws an error: src refspec master does not match any. Let us look at each of these cases and the solution to it.
When does git throws error: src refspec master does not match any?
Scenario 1 – Pushing the changes to master or remote branch
Let’s say you have created a git repository and added all the files from your local branch, but before committing the files, you try to push them into the remote branch or master branch.
mkdir repo && cd repo
git remote add origin /path/to/origin.git
git add .After adding the files from the local branch, if you do git push, you will get an error: src refspec master does not match any. error: failed to push some refs to master.
git push -u origin master
error: src refspec master does not match any.Solution for error: src refspec master does not match any.
All you need to perform is git commit with a proper message and then do git push to the remote origin to avoid any errors.
mkdir repo && cd repo
git remote add origin /path/to/origin.git
git add .
git commit -m "initial commit"
git push origin masterScenario 2 – Check if a remote branch exists.
If you are working with Github, they have replaced the master branch with the main branch. Hence, in these circumstances, the local branch and remote branch ref will differ, and when you try to push the changes, git will throw an error since the remote branch itself is not present.
Solution – First, check what refs you have, and once you find that, make a git push to the specific remote branch.
# To get all the ref
git show-ref
# replace with your branch name according to ref
git push origin HEAD:<branch>
Scenario 3 – Mismatch in Local and remote branch
Generally, even the typo in the branch name while pushing the commit to the remote branch will lead to a refspec error.
Solution – Validate and check if you have given the right branch name while pushing the code to the remote branch.
Scenario 4 – Committing and pushing Empty Directory in Git
A certain version of Git like GitHub, bitbucket does not track the empty directories, so if a directory is empty and you are trying to commit and push, it will lead to an error: src refspec master does not match any.
Solution – Add a file to your directory before pushing it to a remote branch.
Srinivas Ramakrishna
