Error src refspec refs heads main does not match any

There are quite a few reasons Git throws an error: src refspec master does not match any. Let us look at each of these cases and the solution to it.

Scenario 1 – Pushing the changes to master or remote branch

Let’s say you have created a git repository and added all the files from your local branch, but before committing the files, you try to push them into the remote branch or master branch.

mkdir repo && cd repo
git remote add origin /path/to/origin.git
git add .

After adding the files from the local branch, if you do git push, you will get an error: src refspec master does not match any. error: failed to push some refs to master.

git push -u origin master
error: src refspec master does not match any.

Solution for error: src refspec master does not match any.

All you need to perform is git commit with a proper message and then do git push to the remote origin to avoid any errors.

mkdir repo && cd repo
git remote add origin /path/to/origin.git
git add .

git commit -m "initial commit"
git push origin master

Scenario 2 – Check if a remote branch exists.

If you are working with Github, they have replaced the master branch with the main branch. Hence, in these circumstances, the local branch and remote branch ref will differ, and when you try to push the changes, git will throw an error since the remote branch itself is not present.

Solution – First, check what refs you have, and once you find that, make a git push to the specific remote branch.

# To get all the ref 
git show-ref

# replace with your branch name according to ref 
git push origin HEAD:<branch>

Scenario 3 – Mismatch in Local and remote branch

Generally, even the typo in the branch name while pushing the commit to the remote branch will lead to a refspec error. 

Solution – Validate and check if you have given the right branch name while pushing the code to the remote branch.

Scenario 4 – Committing and pushing Empty Directory in Git

A certain version of Git like GitHub, bitbucket does not track the empty directories, so if a directory is empty and you are trying to commit and push, it will lead to an error: src refspec master does not match any.

Solution – Add a file to your directory before pushing it to a remote branch. 

1. Introduction

In this example, we shall explain to you in detail what an “error: src refspec main does not match any” in “git” is and how you can deal with such errors if you encounter them in the future.

2. Error Description

This error occurs when you try to push code from a local repository to a remote repository while using the "git push origin main" command in git command line using git bash and it happens that there is no main branch present hence an error.

3. Recreating the Error

There are several things that can trigger an "src refspec error main does not match any" error. The illustration below will show you how to produce this error.

Let’s assume you cloned a new repository where the default branch is master and there is no main branch. When you type the command: "git push origin main", it displays the "refspec main" error like this:

4. Dealing with refspec errors

Now that you are aware of the "refspec error", let’s explain how to deal with such errors in git. Whenever you encounter such errors don’t panic just follow these procedures like this:

Display the remote branches connected to your local branch on your computer using the "git branch -b" command like this:

git branch -b

#results

# origin/master

From the above result, it is seen that we have only the master branch available in our remote repository and no main branch hence that explains why we had the "src refspec main does not match any" error.

In order for us to create a branch called main where we are going to migrate eventually to, we can either create branch directly on the Github website or we use the git terminal and type the command like this:

After creating the "main branch" we are going to type the command "git push origin main" and it won’t display an error anymore proving that we have resolved the error.

5. Conclusion

When next you encounter an "error: src refspec main does not match any", just know that the main branch does not exist in your remote repository and hence try to create one.