When deleting remote git branch "error: unable to push to unqualified destination"
GitGit Problem Overview
I'm trying to delete a remote git branch with
git push origin :my_remote_branch
and getting:
error: unable to push to unqualified destination: my_remote_branch
The destination refspec neither matches an existing ref on the remote nor
begins with refs/, and we are unable to guess a prefix based on the source ref.
error: failed to push some refs to '[email protected]:/myrepo'
these are my current branches
git branch -a
* develop
master
remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
remotes/origin/develop
remotes/origin/my_remote_branch
git branch -r --merged
origin/HEAD -> origin/master
origin/develop
origin/master
Any ideas on how I can get rid of this branch would be appreciated.
Git Solutions
Solution 1 - Git
The fact that refs/remotes/origin/my_remote_branch exists in your local repository does not imply refs/heads/my_remote_branch exists in the origin remote repository.
Do git fetch -p origin to make refs/remotes/origin/my_remote_branch go away if it's already deleted in origin. The -p option tells fetch to delete any tracking branches that no longer exist in the corresponding remotes; by default they are kept around.
Solution 2 - Git
Found question https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3184555/cleaning-up-old-remote-git-branches and this did the trick
git branch -r -d origin/my_remote_branch
Solution 3 - Git
I ran across this when trying to delete a remote branch that had already been deleted. All that was needed was a prune:
git remote prune origin
Solution 4 - Git
Try following two options to delete remote branch forcibly
Option 1
get push origin --delete <branchName>
Option 2
git fetch -p origin
git branch -r -d origin/<branchName>
Solution 5 - Git
git branch -r -d origin/my_remote_branch
was not enough for me. Before I had to go to server and work with git directory directly (which is dangerous and ugly) to remove the branch:
ssh mygitserver
su - git
cd /home/git/repositories/my_remote_branch.git/
git --git-dir=. --work-tree=/tmp/ branch -D my_remote_branch
Solution 6 - Git
For me the problem was, that this was my default branch on github. I changed default branch, then delete operation was succeeded.
Hope it helps to someone
Solution 7 - Git
I have the similar problem. First went to this discussion, however I couldn't solve the problem until I saw https://stackoverflow.com/a/32147743/4209849.
which simply add a tip on distinguishing origin/my-branch-name and my-branch-name.
To be specific, I should use:
git push origin :my_remote_branch
instead of
git push origin :origin/my_remote_branch
This solved my problem at least, hope it would help others as well.
Solution 8 - Git
Had this same issue, I manually edited my ./.git/config file to include:
[branch "branchName"]
remote = origin
merge = refs/heads/branchName
Which resulted into: error: src refspec branchName matches more than one. This I fixed by running $git tag -d branchName.
After which I was able to push the new branch to upstream.
Solution 9 - Git
This worked for me: I created the remote branch on github UI and then pushed my local branch which had the same name to it. Try it in case other ways dont work. Other way would be creating a new branch locally and pushing an empty branch and later cherry-pick your commit and push again to your remote.