error: pathspec 'test-branch' did not match any file(s) known to git

The modern Git should able to detect remote branches and create a local one on checkout.

However if you did a shallow clone (e.g. with --depth 1), try the following commands to correct it:

git config remote.origin.fetch '+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*' git fetch --all 

and try to checkout out the branch again.

Alternatively try to unshallow your clone, e.g. git fetch --unshallow and try again.

^{See also: How to fetch all remote branches?}

My friend, you need to create those corresponding branches locally first, in order to check-out to those other two branches, using this line of code

git branch test-branch 

and

git branch change-the-title

then only you will be able to do git checkout to those branches

Also after creating each branch, take latest changes of those particular branches by using git pull origin branch_name as shown in below code

git branch test-branch git checkout test-branch git pull origin test-branch 

and for other branch named change-the-title run following code =>

git branch change-the-title git checkout change-the-title git pull origin change-the-title 

Happy programming :)

You can also get this error with any version of git if the remote branch was created after your last clone/fetch and your local repo doesn't know about it yet. I solved it by doing a git fetch first which "tells" your local repo about all the remote branches.

git fetch git checkout test-branch 

just follow three steps, git branch problem will be solved.

git remote update git fetch git checkout --track origin/test-branch 

Solution:

To fix it you need to fetch first

$ git fetch origin $ git rebase origin/master 

Current branch master is up to date.

$ git checkout develop 

Branch develop set up to track remote branch develop from origin.

Switched to a new branch ‘develop’

This error can also appear if your git branch is not correct even though case sensitive wise. In my case I was getting this error as actual branch name was "CORE-something" but I was taking pull like "core-something".

I got this error because the instruction on the Web was

git checkout https://github.com/veripool/verilog-mode

which I did in a directory where (on my own initiative) i had run git init. The correct Web instruction (for newbies like me) should have been

git clone https://github.com/veripool/verilog-mode

Following worked for me

git pull 

Then checkout the required branch

git fetch && git checkout branch-name

Check first if any file is modified in you current branch using

git status

if any add or remove it then try

git checkout branchName

If it is a tag, you can do git fetch --all --tags and then git checkout <TAG_NAME>

As already mentioned, in many cases, this is because you're trying to checkout a remote branch that has been created more recently than you've fetched from remote.

You can eliminate this problem altogether with a helpful alias that will run the git checkout command and if it runs into any errors, fetch the latest changes from origin, and retry the checkout.

Just add the following alias to your gitconfig

[alias] co = "!f() { \ git checkout \"$@\" 2>/dev/null || { \ echo 'Branch not found, fetching remote branches...'; \ git fetch && \ git checkout \"$@\"; \ }; \ }; f" 

And run like this:

git co my-branch git co -b my-new-branch 

In the example above, if you don't have a reference to my-branch locally, it'll fetch and then try checking it out again

See Also: Git: cannot checkout branch - error: pathspec '...' did not match any file(s) known to git

Try cloning before doing the checkout.

do git clone "where to find it" then after cloning check out the branch