git pushing commit shows error: unable to push to unqualified destination

Question

I'm trying to push head commit to remote with WIP- showing error like

$ git push remote 51447424149c671958a2f76ec1fefb135a5c2cea:WIP-51447424149c671958a2f76ec1fefb135a5c2cea

[which results in]

error: unable to push to unqualified destination: WIP-51447424149c671958a2f76ec1fefb135a5c2cea
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 'https://github.com/abc'

Any help ?

Answer 1

TL;DR

You probably wanted:

$ git push remote 51447424149c671958a2f76ec1fefb135a5c2cea:refs/heads/WIP-51447424149c671958a2f76ec1fefb135a5c2cea

to create a branch named WIP-51447424149c671958a2f76ec1fefb135a5c2cea. (Be sure you really want to create that name, as it's kind of unweildy. It's valid and there is no problem with it, it's just a heck of a thing to type in.)

Long

What Git is complaining about takes a little bit of explanation:

• A branch name is a special form of reference.
• A reference is a string starting with refs/. The familiar two kinds of references are branch names and tags. (More about this in just a moment.)
• References can be abbreviated ... sometimes, but not always.
• Sometimes (wherever it makes sense to Git) you can use a raw hash ID instead of a reference.
• git push takes a refspec, which is a pair of references separated by a colon (and optionally the whole thing can be prefixed with a plus sign).

What you're doing with git push is using the (very long) refspec 51447424149c671958a2f76ec1fefb135a5c2cea:WIP-51447424149c671958a2f76ec1fefb135a5c2cea. The left side of this refspec is the source reference, and the right side is the destination reference.

The thing on the left side of the colon is clearly¹ a hash ID. So this is making use of the special case where you can supply a hash ID instead of an actual reference (as long as that object actually exists in your Git repository).

The thing on the right side of the colon, though, is a name, not a hash ID. This is good since this is one of the places that Git requires a name. But it's also a problem, because the name WIP-something does not start with refs/.

Note that Git explicitly complains about that:

The destination ... nor begins with refs/

Before we get to the rest, let's mention branches and tags again. A branch name like master is short-hand for the reference refs/heads/master. A tag name like v1.2 is short-hand for the reference refs/tags/v1.2. Note that in both cases, these start with refs/. They go on to name which kind of reference we're using:

• A branch name reference starts with refs/heads/.
• A tag name reference starts with refs/tags/.

In other words, when we say that branches and tags are forms of references, we're saying that given a reference, you can look at what comes right after refs/ and figure out what kind of reference it is: refs/heads/ means "branch" and refs/tags/ means "tag". (If you see refs/remotes/, that means it's a remote-tracking name; and there are yet more special words that go after refs/, such as notes/ for git notes.)

We also said above that references can sometimes be abbreviated. That's the first part of what Git is complaining about here, though:

... neither matches an existing ref on the remote ...

You're allowed to leave out the refs/heads/ part, and have the other Git—the one that your Git is pushing-to—figure out that master really means refs/heads/master. But this only works if they already have a refs/heads/master. If you're trying to create a new branch, you must tell the other Git: I'd like you to create a new branch.

You do this by giving the full name of the reference: refs/heads/WIP-something, for instance. The fact that it starts with refs/heads/ tells the other Git: I'd like to create a branch name. If you send them refs/tags/WIP-something, you are telling them to create a new tag name.

Anyway, this is why you're getting the rather long complaint, with its two parts: "neither ... nor". So the solution is to send them the full name.

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¹What, isn't it obvious? :-) This reminds me of the professors who prove theorems by doing six transformations and then saying "the rest is obvious...".