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 -> 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 <[email protected]>
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 => 20110511012647) do
+ActiveRecord::Schema.define(:version => 20110503040056) do

   create_table "attachments", :force => true do |t|
     t.string   "name"
@@ -205,15 +205,6 @@ ActiveRecord::Schema.define(:version => 20110511012647) do
     t.integer  "old_id"
   end

-  create_table "site_layouts", :force => 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 => true do |t|
     t.text     "published"
     t.datetime "created_at"

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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/<BRANCH-NAME>, 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/<BRANCH-NAME>

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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 "remote.origin.fetch" 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 "remote.origin.fetch" to fetch everything

$ git config remote.origin.fetch "+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*"

$ git config --get remote.origin.fetch

+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

Then, you can try "git pull" (maybe "git fetch origin" also works but I didn't try) to get all the branch.

Answer 6

I had the same issue for one of my branch.

These commands work for me.

git fetch --all
git checkout <branch-name>

Answer 7

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"

Answer 8

If branch name and you dont have any uncommited file, then try this

git fetch && git checkout <branch name>

Answer 9

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 <new_branch>

Answer 10

git pull

That simply fixed it for me :)

Answer 11

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 voilá, it worked. The alternative to set the default remote via:

checkout.defaultRemote=origin

did not work for me

Answer 12

I got the same problem because I used git clone --depth=1, which implies --single-branch.

Do a completed git clone will fix it.

Answer 13

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.

Answer 14

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.

Answer 15

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.

Answer 16

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.

Answer 17

First, checkout parent branch.Then type

git fetch --all --prune 
git checkout <your branch>

Hope it helps!.

Answer 18

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.

Answer 19

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> git config core.ignorecase false

you can find this configuration on .git\config file

Answer 20

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

Answer 21

I had made a silly mistake of not providing -m flag while committing (lol happens)

git commit -m "commit message in here"

Answer 22

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.

Answer 23

Three steps

1. Write a command 'git fetch'
2. then you will see the desired branch then switch to the relevant branch 'git checkout 'your_branch_name'
3. then write a command 'git pull origin your_desired_branch_name'

Answer 24

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.

Answer 25

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 <remote-name>

Then git fetch

Now I am able to checkout branch by git checkout <branch-name>.

Answer 26

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

Answer 27

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<T> 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.

Answer 28

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

Answer 29

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

Answer 30

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.