69

I give up! Whenever I try to push I get a stupid: 

! [rejected] master -> master (non-fast forward) error: failed to push some refs to '[email protected]:companyX/projectX.git'

Our team has a new git setup. Instead of making private branches I now Forked our main repository (on github) to create my own copy.

At some point what I did was:

$ git fetch upstream master:upstreammaster

So here is my current setup::

$ git branch master * upstreammaster $ git remote -v origin [email protected]:userX/projectX.git upstream [email protected]:companyX/projectX.git

where userX is my private repository.

So I go and make some changes to my upstreammaster branch, and the PULL from "upstream master". Everything merges and stuff:

$ git pull upstream master remote: Counting objects: 95, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (60/60), done. remote: Total 60 (delta 54), reused 0 (delta 0) Unpacking objects: 100% (60/60), done. From [email protected]:companyX/projectX * branch master -> FETCH_HEAD Merge made by recursive. stuff | 165 ++++++++++++-------- stuff | 35 ++-- stuff | 107 ++++++++++--- stuff | 105 ++++++++++--- stuff | 24 ++-- stuff | 9 +- stuff | 53 +++---- stuff | 44 +++--- stuff | 52 +++---- stuff | 32 +---- stuff | 4 +- stuff | 138 ++++++++--------- stuff | 58 ++++---- stuff | 115 ++++++++------ stuff | 5 +- stuff | 39 ++--- stuff | 28 ++-- 17 files changed, 560 insertions(+), 453 deletions(-)

but then when I try to do:

$ git push upstream master To [email protected]:companyX/projectX.git ! [rejected] master -> master (non-fast forward) error: failed to push some refs to '[email protected]:companyX/projectX.git'

Any help would be greately appreciated! If you need clarification please ask, I will reply!

Improve this question
5
  • @drozzy: Do you know why Git does not accept your command? Your command once worked for me. After I moved Git to another folder in my Mac, I get a similar error message. Commented Apr 7, 2009 at 19:49
  • no sorry i don't know. Right now I mostly do "git push upstream master", after having merged my other branch into upstreammaster. Commented Apr 7, 2009 at 21:13
  • See also Git push non-fast-forward updates were rejected. Commented May 18, 2014 at 17:06
  • Check your folder permissions on the git-servers repo folder for write-access (also for subdirectories!) Commented May 17, 2017 at 10:26
  • git push can be rejected if you have two branches with similar name, in my case my second branch was named: branch1.name()+ '/specification'. Git rejected it and i solved my problem thanks to @Pat Notz Commented Oct 19, 2018 at 15:23

9 Answers 9

Reset to default
29

When doing a push, try specifying the refspec for the upstream master:

git push upstream upstreammaster:master
Improve this answer
Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

3 Comments

@Jarret: It does not work for me. My code $git push [email protected]:user/repo.git [email protected]:user/repo.git:master.
Masi, try without using the full URL on the second parameter: git push [email protected]:user/repo.git master
how to do this on zend studio?
20

Jarret Hardie is correct. Or, first merge your changes back into master and then try the push. By default, git push pushes all branches that have names that match on the remote -- and no others. So those are your two choices -- either specify it explicitly like Jarret said or merge back to a common branch and then push.

There's been talk about this on the Git mail list and it's clear that this behavior is not about to change anytime soon -- many developers rely on this behavior in their workflows.

Edit/Clarification

Assuming your upstreammaster branch is ready to push then you could do this:

  1. Pull in any changes from the upstream.

    $ git pull upstream master

  2. Switch to my local master branch

    $ git checkout master

  3. Merge changes in from upstreammaster

    $ git merge upstreammaster

  4. Push my changes up

    $ git push upstream

Another thing that you may want to do before pushing is to rebase your changes against upstream/master so that your commits are all together. You can either do that as a separate step between #1 and #2 above (git rebase upstream/master) or you can do it as part of your pull (git pull --rebase upstream master)

Improve this answer

3 Comments

How do you mean "merge back to a common branch and then push"? Which is the common branch in this case?
I had the same problem after checking out and working on a branch, and pushing changes that included an update to a file that had been deleted in the master branch (which I had not touched at all). Another developer tried some Git commands I didn't catch, but the problem remained: git status showed that my branch was clean, git pull did nothing, but the command git push still output error: failed to push some refs.... I finally got the problem fixed like this: 1. git checkout master, 2. git pull, and 3. git checkout the_branch_name.
er... well, and what happens when you do the first command (git pull upstream master) and you have a conflict in the pull??? You have to solve the conflict before going on??
14

First use

git pull https://github.com/username/repository master

and then try

git push -u origin master
Improve this answer

Comments

13

First, attempt to pull from the same refspec that you are trying to push to.

If this does not work, you can force a git push by using git push -f <repo> <refspec>, but use caution: this method can cause references to be deleted on the remote repository.

Improve this answer

Comments

11

Actually I got the same error but the below comment worked for me

git push -f origin master
Improve this answer

1 Comment

Be aware that this solution will remove commits (possibly including work accomplished) in the target branch.
3

Is your repository at "upstream" a bare repository? I got the same error, but when I change to bare they no longer happen.

Improve this answer

1 Comment

awesome, this is exactly what was causing my problem, thanks for the answer!
2

If nothing works, try:

git pull --allow-unrelated-histories <repo> <branch>

then do:

git push --set-upstream origin master
Improve this answer

Comments

1

If push request is shows Rejected, then try first pull from your github account and then try push.

Ex:

In my case it was giving an error-

 ! [rejected] master -> master (fetch first) error: failed to push some refs to 'https://github.com/ashif8984/git-github.git' hint: Updates were rejected because the remote contains work that you do hint: not have locally. This is usually caused by another repository pushing hint: to the same ref. You may want to first integrate the remote changes hint: (e.g., 'git pull ...') before pushing again. hint: See the 'Note about fast-forwards' in 'git push --help' for details.

****So what I did was-****

$ git pull $ git push

And the code was pushed successfully into my Github Account.

Improve this answer

Comments

0

My colleague had the additional error: Ask a project Owner or Maintainer to create a default branch

It turned out he didn't have enough permissions in the git repo (Gitlab). He was able to push when his access level was upgraded.

Improve this answer

Comments

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.