When collaborating with other developers using Git, you might encounter the error: failed to push some refs to [remote repo] error.
This error mainly occurs when you attempt to push your local changes to GitHub while the local repository (repo) has not yet been updated with any changes made in the remote repo.
So Git is trying to tell you to update the local repo with the current changes in the remote before pushing your own changes. This is necessary so that you don't override the changes made by others.
We'll be discussing two possible ways of fixing this error in the sections that follow.
How to Fix the error: failed to push some refs to Error in Git
We can fix the error: failed to push some refs to [remote repo] error in Git using the git pull origin [branch] or git pull --rebase origin [branch] commands. In most cases, the latter fixes the error.
Let's go over how you can use the commands above.
How to Fix error: failed to push some refs to Error in Git Using git pull
To send a pull request means to "fetch" new changes made to the remote repo and merge them with the local repo.
Once the merging is done, you can then push your own code changes to GitHub.
In our case, we're trying to get rid of the error: failed to push some refs to [remote repo] error by sending a pull request.
Here's how you can do that:
git pull origin mainIf you're working with a different branch, then you'd have to replace main in the example above with the name of your branch.
Just keep in mind that there are chances of failure when using this command to sync your remote and local repos to get rid of the error. If the request succeeds, then go on and run the command below to push your own changes:
git push -u origin mainIf the error persists, you'll get an error that says: fatal: refusing to merge unrelated histories. In that case, use the solution in the next section.
How to Fix error: failed to push some refs to Error in Git Using git pull --rebase
The git pull --rebase command is helpful in situations where your local branch is a commit behind the remote branch.
To fix the error, go on and run following commands:
git pull --rebase origin main
git push -u origin main If the first command above runs successfully, you should get a response that says: Successfully rebased and updated refs/heads/main.
The second command pushes your local repo's current state to the remote branch.
Summary
In this article, we talked about the error: failed to push some refs to [remote repo] error.
This error occurs when you attempt to push your local changes to the remote repo without updating your local repo with new changes made to the remote repo.
We discussed two commands that you can use to fix the error: the git pull origin [branch] and git pull --rebase origin [branch] commands.
I hope this helps you fix the error.
Happy coding!