pretext deploy fails

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David Austin

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Aug 26, 2026, 6:18:00 AMAug 26
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I set up a project for a colleague, and both of us have been able to build the target "course" and deploy to github pages.  But as of yesterday, when she runs "pretext deploy", the CLI reports success, but the results do not appear, meaning there is no new commit to the gh-pages branch on github.  

She is working locally in a docker container, and she is able to push changes in the source to the remote repository and deploy through the github action after doing so.  I am still able to deploy through the CLI.

There is a git warning that I don't understand when she deploys:

Attempting to connect to remote repository at `https://github.com/davidaustinm/MTH124.git`...
[git.remote] WARNING: Error lines received while fetching: error: failed to
Latest build successfully pushed to GitHub!
--------------------------------

She also sees the following when attempting to deploy, which is something that I don't see.

Done: Processed 0 articles, 0 drafts, 0 hidden articles, 0 pages, 0 hidden pages and 0 draft pages in 0.03 seconds.
-------------------------------------

Here is the whole report from her pretext deploy:

root@b88a462d15ae:/workspaces/MTH124 $ pretext deploy
Version 2.50.0 of pretext is available.  You are currently using version 2.47.1.
To upgrade, run `pretext upgrade`.
PreTeXt project found in `/workspaces/MTH124`.
warning: Using CLI version 2.47.1 but project's `requirements.txt`
warning: is configured to use 2.45.0. Consider either installing
warning: CLI version 2.45.0 or running `pretext update-project`
warning: to update `requirements.txt` and other managed files to match 2.47.1.
Staging deployment according to strategy pelican_default
Staging `course` at `/workspaces/MTH124/output/stage/course`.
Staging generated site at `/workspaces/MTH124/output/stage`.
XSL conversion of /workspaces/MTH124/source/main.ptx by /root/.ptx/2.47.1/core/xsl/utilities/pretext-enhanced-source.xsl
messages from the log for XSL processing (prefaced with a *):
warning: * PTX:DEPRECATE: (2026-07-30) the external directory is a property of your source, and is now declared with a "directories/@external" attribute within "docinfo".  The publication file entry "source/directories/@external" is honored meanwhile, but please relocate it.
successful application of /root/.ptx/2.47.1/core/xsl/utilities/pretext-enhanced-source.xsl
Done: Processed 0 articles, 0 drafts, 0 hidden articles, 0 pages, 0 hidden pages and 0 draft pages in 0.03 seconds.
Deployment is now staged at `/workspaces/MTH124/output/stage`.
Preparing to deploy from active `main` git branch.

Changes to project source since last commit detected.
warning: Don't forget to either add and commit the changes to your source with git, or run `pretext deploy -u` to have these changes updated automatically.
warning: Just deploying your built project will not save changes to your source on GitHub.`
Committing your latest build to the `gh-pages` branch.

Attempting to connect to remote repository at `https://github.com/davidaustinm/MTH124.git`...
[git.remote] WARNING: Error lines received while fetching: error: failed to
Latest build successfully pushed to GitHub!

To enable GitHub Pages, visit
selecting the `gh-pages` branch with the `/ (root)` folder.

Visit
to check on the status of your GitHub Pages deployment.

Your built project will soon be available to the public at:
root@b88a462d15ae:/workspaces/MTH124 $ 

David Austin

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Aug 26, 2026, 8:30:45 PMAug 26
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My colleague and I got this working today, but I still don't understand what was going on.  We just did the individual steps that the CLI performs in a deploy (I think) in an effort to see where things would fail.

pretext deploy --no-push
git push origin gh-pages --force

That worked and then she was able to use "pretext deploy" in the usual way.  

David


Oscar Levin

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Aug 26, 2026, 9:13:53 PMAug 26
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I think this happens if the gh-pages branch on GitHub gets ahead of the local version, so the push to it doesn't get resolved.  Maybe we should just always force push, although that might mess up the cname file that GitHub uses when there is a custom domain.

Oscar.

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David Austin

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Aug 27, 2026, 6:56:43 AMAug 27
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It seems like there is a git warning so I wonder if the CLI could detect when this happens and provide a clearer message with a suggested fix.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/CAOU9BaUvMsYGnKTgT8fVS-e2P_8Egpu9ZL8Bciqc2fnR8xrRLQ%40mail.gmail.com.

Mitch Keller

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Aug 27, 2026, 9:47:40 AMAug 27
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That was my thought, but I tried a little experiment yesterday, as I work on the active-calculus-vector repository on two different computers. I was on my work laptop, which was several commits behind the gh-pages branch on GitHub, as I’d mostly been working on that project on my personal laptop for the past two months. (I checked out gh-pages locally and saw the most recent commit was in June, while GitHub had commits from earlier in August.) I was able to do pretext deploy and not only did the push go smoothly, but afterward, my local copy of gh-pages showed the intervening commits that were previously only on my other computer and GitHub.

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