I tried to execute command:
$ git branch --set-upstream-to master origin/master fatal: branch 'origin/master' does not exist I checked origin/master exists
3 Answers
The syntax for git branch is:
git branch' (--set-upstream-to=<upstream> | -u <upstream>) [<branchname>] In your case:
git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master master # or git branch -u origin/master master # for git older than 1.8 git branch master --set-upstream origin/master If you see an error like:
Error is: fatal: Cannot setup tracking information; starting point 'origin/master' is not a branch. It means you haven't fetched anything from the remote origin.
Check that you do have a remote named origin, with a proper associated url
git remote -vTry and fetch from origin
git fetch origin
You can see more about the fetch process in "After git update remote the new upstream branches are visible but not origin".
2 Comments
VonC
@SergiiBezgin What error message do you see? And what version of Git are you using?
Sergii Bezgin
Error is: fatal: Cannot setup tracking information; starting point 'origin/master' is not a branch.
Usually after doing a git init and then also creating a repository in Github, the next thing I want to do is set my remote origin and tie my remote branch to my local master branch.
git init git remote add origin <repository_url> git fetch Now, when I enter
git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master master I get the error: fatal: branch 'master' does not exist
So, I did a
git branch -a and found only
remotes/origin/master
Since I was in a newly created git repository, I did a simple
git checkout master After this, git branch -a showed me the local master branch along with the remote,
master
remotes/origin/master
After this
git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master master gave no error and my local master branch was set to track the remote master branch.
Comments
I found this question while searching for
"fatal: branch 'integration/release/February' does not exist" but the reason for the error in my case was different.
I "set upstream" enough that I'd made a bash alias for it, but when I tried to use the alias I introduced a space that meant the command I was sending was
git branch --set-upstream-to= integration/release/February whereas what I needed, obviously, was
git branch --set-upstream-to=integration/release/February 
origin/masteris a "remote branch", and remote branches do not have "upstreams". Normally they are upstreams; normally you'd setmaster(a local branch) to haveorigin/master(remote branch) as its upstream. Is that what you meant to do?