fatal: ambiguous argument 'origin': unknown revision or path not in the working tree

Question

I used git diff origin often in the past.

In a different environment it does not work. I have no clue why.

user@host> git diff origin fatal: ambiguous argument 'origin': unknown revision or path not in the working tree. Use '--' to separate paths from revisions, like this: 'git <command> [<revision>...] -- [<file>...]'

Status:

user@host> git status On branch master nothing to commit, working directory clean

Remotes:

user@host> git remote -v origin https://example.com/repos/djangotools (fetch) origin https://example.com/repos/djangotools (push)

Version:

user@host> git --version git version 2.7.4

With "git version 1.8.1.4" git diff origin works.

BTW I see the same err msg if I use "git diff origin/master"

BTW2, I think the "/master" is redundant. The sane default is to compare the local branch with the same branch on the remote site.

A remote like origin alone is never expected in any git diff command. — ElpieKay
– ElpieKay, Commented Jul 14, 2017 at 7:12
I tried. Yes it works. It seems git diff origin is short for git diff master origin/master if the current branch is master. If the current branch has no remote tracking branch, it should not work. — ElpieKay
– ElpieKay, Commented Jul 14, 2017 at 7:44
As shown in kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitrevisions.html the bare name origin will typically resolve via step 6, i.e., by resolving origin/HEAD. (If some earlier step resolves it first, though, you will get the earlier step's resolution. If origin/HEAD does not exist or is invalid, you will get the fatal you are seeing.) This pays no attention to the current branch's upstream setting: if you want to diff against that, use @{u}. You might say that Git uses the insane default. :-) — torek
– torek, Commented Jul 14, 2017 at 14:19
I had the same exception, but for me it was because I was trying to push to a branch that was not published. After I published the branch I was able to push to it. — Tanyo Ivanov
– Tanyo Ivanov, Commented Feb 20 at 20:30

Chris · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-14 10:00:24Z

The git diff command typically expects one or more commit hashes to generate your diff. You seem to be supplying the name of a remote.

If you had a branch named origin, the commit hash at tip of the branch would have been used if you supplied origin to the diff command, but currently (with no corresponding branch) the command will produce the error you're seeing. It may be the case that you were previously working with a branch named origin.

An alternative, if you're trying to view the difference between your local branch, and a branch on a remote would be something along the lines of:

git diff origin/<branchname>

git diff <branchname> origin/<branchname>

Or other documented variants.

Edit: Having read further, I realise I'm slightly wrong, git diff origin is shorthand for diffing against the head of the specified remote, so git diff origin = git diff origin/HEAD (compare local git branch with remote branch?, Why is "origin/HEAD" shown when running "git branch -r"?)

It sounds like your origin does not have a HEAD, in my case this is because my remote is a bare repository that has never had a HEAD set.

Running git branch -r will show you if origin/HEAD is set, and if so, which branch it points at (e.g. origin/HEAD -> origin/<branchname>).

thank you very much. Yes, git branch -r is empty in one repo and in the other it is not empty. That's why git diff origin works in one repo and not in the other.
<branchname> here is substituted for your specific named branch.

cosmicdust · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-13 22:56:16Z

I ran into the same situation where commands such as git diff origin or git diff origin master produced the error reported in the question, namely Fatal: ambiguous argument...

To resolve the situation, I ran the command

git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD refs/remotes/origin/master

to set refs/remotes/origin/HEAD to point to the origin/master branch.

Before running this command, the output of git branch -a was:

* master remotes/origin/master

After running the command, the error no longer happened and the output of git branch -a was:

* master remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master remotes/origin/master

(Other answers have already identified that the source of the error is HEAD not being set for origin. But I thought it helpful to provide a command which may be used to fix the error in question, although it may be obvious to some users.)

Additional information:

For anybody inclined to experiment and go back and forth between setting and unsetting refs/remotes/origin/HEAD, here are some examples.

To unset:
git remote set-head origin --delete

To set:
(additional ways, besides the way shown at the start of this answer)
git remote set-head origin master to set origin/head explicitly
OR
git remote set-head origin --auto to query the remote and automatically set origin/HEAD to the remote's current branch.

References:

This SO Answer
This SO Comment and its associated answer
git remote --help see set-head description
git symbolic-ref --help

There are many similar answers here, but for me only running git fetch origin "+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*" solved the issue, because the original problem was in shallow clone of single branch Following advise here stackoverflow.com/questions/42886031/…

Thuo Ng'ang'a · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-20 10:27:07Z

For those experiencing this error on CI/CD, adding the line below worked for me on my GitHub Actions CI/CD workflow right after running pip install pyflakes diff-cover:

git fetch origin master:refs/remotes/origin/master

This is a snippet of the solution from the diff-cover github repo:

Solution: diff-cover matches source files in the coverage XML report with source files in the git diff. For this reason, it's important that the relative paths to the files match. If you are using coverage.py to generate the coverage XML report, then make sure you run diff-cover from the same working directory.

I got the solution on the links below. It is a documented diff-cover error.

https://diff-cover.readthedocs.io/en/latest//README.html https://github.com/Bachmann1234/diff_cover/blob/master/README.rst

Hope this helps :-).

Took me two hours of digging around to find this answer, which finally solved my problem.
Thank you for this comment it took me one week to find this.

humazed · Accepted Answer · 2023-07-17 14:42:18Z

If you are having this issue in GitHub action you need to add:

fetch-depth: 0

So the step is

steps: - name: Checkout repository uses: actions/checkout@v3 with: fetch-depth: 0

For additional info please check https://github.com/actions/checkout/issues/296

Had similar case in Jenkins and this helped me figure out the issue. Thank you.

Roma · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-28 19:09:40Z

Sometimes things might be simpler. I came here with the exact issue and tried all the suggestions. But later found that the problem was just the local file path was different and I was on a different folder. :-)

eg -

~/myproject/mygitrepo/app/$ git diff app/TestFile.txt

should have been

~/myproject/mygitrepo/app/$ git diff TestFile.txt

sfinkens · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-16 09:13:02Z

If origin points to a bare repository on disk, this error can happen if that directory has been moved (even if you update the working copy's remotes). For example

$ mv /path/to/origin /somewhere/else $ git remote set-url origin /somewhere/else $ git diff origin/master fatal: ambiguous argument 'origin': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.

Pulling once from the new origin solves the problem:

$ git stash $ git pull origin master $ git stash pop

Manan Shah · Accepted Answer · 2021-09-22 12:45:25Z

Remove opt/homebrew folder cd /opt, sudo rm -rf homebrew
Install Homebrew : /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

If you are installing homebrew first time and facing this error than also on second attempt first clear remove the /opt/homebrew folder first.

This question of me is not related to Homebrew. It happend on Ubuntu Linux.

T.Todua · Accepted Answer · 2023-05-22 13:55:49Z

It might happen if you fetched/cloned with depth=1. So, you might also need to fetch the target branch from remote:

git remote set-branches origin 'your_target_branch' git fetch --depth=1 // show local branches to confirm git branch -a // git diff ....

(note, replace your_target_branch with whatever you need, you might even need master)

Ankita Agarwal · Accepted Answer · 2022-02-14 15:39:52Z

Run the following setup then you will be ready to use brew

Run unintsall script :- /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/uninstall.sh)"

Set Git Compression :- git config --global core.compression 0

Set Git buffer size :- git config --global http.postBuffer 1048576000

Run installation script :- /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

Thanks, I was able to get by without running the Set Git Compression and Set Git buffer size instructions.

Afaq Ahmed Khan · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-31 13:26:25Z

This worked for me on win replace REL_PATH_TO_FILE with the relative path to the file to remove Removing sensitive data from a repository The docs say full path - but that errored for me -so I tried rel path and it worked.

<from the repo dir>git filter-branch --force --index-filter "git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch REL_PATH_TO_FILE" --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all

Dionis Beqiraj · Accepted Answer · 2024-03-28 15:50:03Z

I was having this issue with the Bitbucket pipeline. Basically I needed to store the branch from remote repository locally before performing any further git operation on it.

Th wrong solution

git fetch origin develop git log develop..$BITBUCKET_BRANCH // I was getting the error here

The right solution

git fetch origin develop:develop git log develop..$BITBUCKET_BRANCH

Yannick · Accepted Answer · 2023-01-24 11:25:09Z

0

start with git fetch

and git diff master origin/master

that is all.

answered Jan 24, 2023 at 11:25

Yannick

92 bronze badges

1 Comment

Nol4635 Over a year ago

Hello and welcome to Stack Overflow! This is a duplicate answer. Before posting, make sure someone else hasn't already posted the same thing.

NickyPatel · Accepted Answer · 2023-12-14 15:26:12Z

i was getting this error when I was trying to update my branch by mistake.

I found that my branch was merged.

vksssd · Accepted Answer · 2022-12-04 19:19:05Z

Try to unintall with:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/uninstall.sh)"

And then, install with:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

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