Error when working with new GitHub repo ?

[John Emmas]

Earlier today I signed up to GitHub and created a bare repository for
some testing. GitHub's helper app (GitHub for Windows) automatically
checked out the repo (which is empty) to a folder on my Windows
machine. If I use TortoiseGit to pull from this repo, I'd normally
expect a message telling me that I'm already up-to-date - but in fact, I
get this message:-

" Your configuration specifies to merge with the ref 'master'
from the remote but no such ref was fetched.
git did not exit cleanly (exit code 1) "

If I perform a 'fetch' that seems to succeed but a 'pull' gives me the
above message. Is that expected behaviour or is something wrong?

John

[John Emmas]

On 11 Apr 2013, at 17:29, John Emmas wrote:

> GitHub's helper app (GitHub for Windows) automatically checked out the repo (which is empty) to a folder on my Windows machine. If I use TortoiseGit to pull from this repo, I'd normally expect a message telling me that I'm already up-to-date - but in fact, I get this message:-
>
> " Your configuration specifies to merge with the ref 'master'
> from the remote but no such ref was fetched.
> git did not exit cleanly (exit code 1) "
>

This must be one of those little 'funnies' that happens if the repo is empty. Now that I've added some items it seems to be working as normal. Strange....

John

[Frank Li]

It is reported by git command line.
You can run git pull in console. You should get the same result.

2013/4/12 John Emmas <joh...@tiscali.co.uk>:

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[heut...@gmail.com]

I had this same error message and tore my hair out trying to figure the meaning of it. I'm an acting Dev QA right now for my project, and thus have had to work with Git and "pulling down code" and whatnot, despite having no background (formal or informal) in programming. 

Finally, I found my answer here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/292357/what-are-the-differences-between-git-pull-and-git-fetch?rq=1

The most relevant part there is this: 

• git fetch is the command that says "bring my local copy of the remote repository up to date."

• git pull says "bring the changes into the remote repository where I keep my own code."

Since I don't actually code or have actually have anything in whatever repository my code would be kept if it existed, the Git Pull command results in that "did not exit cleanly" error along with the message "Your configuration specifies to merge with the ref 'X/Y' from the remote, but no such ref was fetched.. " In other words, it means Git is attempting to merge repository updates with my non-existent code, and is throwing a tantrum because I have no code of my own to update.

Really, I just need to stick with performing a git fetch.