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Development Tools Git Basics Working With Remote Repositories Pushing and Pulling

Matt Corby
Matt Corby
2,385 Points
Posted by Matt Corby
Matt Corby
2,385 Points

Cannot push to origin

I cloned my remote repository named "testRepos" to a new repository named "clonedRepos". I edited a file, committed it, and tried to push clonedRepos to testRepos.

I get a bunch of error messages:

matt@matt-HP-Pavilion-g6-Notebook-PC:~/Documents/clonedRepos$ git push origin
Counting objects: 3, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 320 bytes | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: error: refusing to update checked out branch: refs/heads/master
remote: error: By default, updating the current branch in a non-bare repository
remote: error: is denied, because it will make the index and work tree inconsistent
remote: error: with what you pushed, and will require 'git reset --hard' to match
remote: error: the work tree to HEAD.
remote: error: 
remote: error: You can set 'receive.denyCurrentBranch' configuration variable to
remote: error: 'ignore' or 'warn' in the remote repository to allow pushing into
remote: error: its current branch; however, this is not recommended unless you
remote: error: arranged to update its work tree to match what you pushed in some
remote: error: other way.
remote: error: 
remote: error: To squelch this message and still keep the default behaviour, set
remote: error: 'receive.denyCurrentBranch' configuration variable to 'refuse'.
To /home/matt/Documents/testRepos
 ! [remote rejected] master -> master (branch is currently checked out)
error: failed to push some refs to '/home/matt/Documents/testRepos'

Maybe it's because I have a branch in testRepos that's not in clonedRepos? Why would that happen? I cloned testRepos when it had a branch in it!

Julian Gu
Julian Gu
12,490 Points

I ran into the same problem, and after doing some testing I am pretty sure that this issue is caused by the fact that we are trying to push a branch that already exists in the remote repository. However, I don't know how to fix it

2 Answers

Oziel Perez
Oziel Perez
61,321 Points
Oziel Perez
Oziel Perez
61,321 Points

I ran into the same problem. Unlike others who say they have a similar problem, I actually have a solution. Did you try switching back to master branch on the origin repository? That's what I did. Then change directory to the cloned repository, switch to your second branch, then 'git push origin <branch-name>' and it should work.

Chris Komaroff
PLUS
Chris Komaroff
Courses Plus Student 14,198 Points
Chris Komaroff
Chris Komaroff
Courses Plus Student 14,198 Points

Thanks Oziel Perez for spotting this (and thanks to Julian Gu for asking this as I almost gave up). I went back to "remote" to look at file2 and did not switch back to master like Tommy did. This is a nice thing to learn. The first link below explains. The default "git push" needs to be done on a "bare" repository I think, meaning one with no working directory (never did "git checkout"). One trick is, on the remote, to "git checkout" to a branch other than the one you push to. I think this simulates a bare repo? I can't spot any documentation on this. GitHub probably gets this question about this push error.

http://umaranis.com/2014/08/04/git-push-error-refusing-to-update-checked-out-branch-source-control/ https://git-scm.com/docs/git-push