git commit -m 'first commit' returns error: pathspec 'commit' did not match any files(s) known to git.

[Joshua Moore]

I tried following the initial instructions on github, but got the
error message:
error: pathspec 'commit' did not match any files(s) known to git.

What's wrong here?

[Konstantin Khomoutov]

Possibly you blindly copied some example intended for POSIX-like
systems with sane shell to Windows cmd.exe in which the apostrophe
sign has no special meaning.
To demonstrate:

C:\tmp>mkdir test

C:\tmp>cd test

C:\tmp\test>git init
Initialized empty Git repository in C:/tmp/test/.git/

C:\tmp\test>git commit -m 'first commit'
error: pathspec 'commit'' did not match any file(s) known to git.

C:\tmp\test>git commit -m "first commit"
# On branch master
#
# Initial commit
#
nothing to commit (create/copy files and use "git add" to track)

[Joshua Moore]

Yeah, that must be what happened. Do you know the corresponding
windows command or where I can look em up?

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Thu, 8 Jul 2010, Joshua Moore wrote:

> Yeah, that must be what happened. Do you know the corresponding
> windows command or where I can look em up?

umm... You quoted (amongst everything else and her dog) the answer to your
own question: