This is driving me up the wall!

This is what I've done:

1. Created a folder with some code (local repo)
2. Created a repo in Github e.g. my_repo
3. Issued these commands (and trial and error'ed hella other stuff too):

git init && \
git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD refs/remotes/origin/main && \
git remote add origin https://github.com/my_github/my_repo.git && \
git checkout -b init_branch && \
git add * && \
git commit -m "Initial commit" && \
git push origin init_branch && \
git checkout main && \
git merge init_branch

The error I'm seeing:

 ! [rejected]        init_branch -> init_branch (fetch first)
error: failed to push some refs to 'https://github.com/my_github/my_repo.git'
hint: Updates were rejected because the remote contains work that you do
hint: not have locally. This is usually caused by another repository pushing
hint: to the same ref. You may want to first integrate the remote changes
hint: (e.g., 'git pull ...') before pushing again.
hint: See the 'Note about fast-forwards' in 'git push --help' for details.

On occasions getting this error (not sure why):

error: pathspec 'main' did not match any file(s) known to git

What I've tried:

1. Switching the default branch in Github from main to master and pushing straight to master - that worked but want to keep it as main.
2. Not creating a new branch and attempting to push straight to main - doesn't work.
3. Having git remote add origin ... straight after git init - doesn't work.
4. Removed the symbolic-ref line, added git config --global init.defaultBranch main and git pull origin main. New error:

* branch            main       -> FETCH_HEAD
 * [new branch]      main       -> origin/main
error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by merge:
        .gitignore
Please move or remove them before you merge.
Aborting

Any help would be much appreciated

CodePudding user response：

TL;DR

Make sure you create an empty repository on GitHub. Don't put in that initial commit. Then you can get rid of most of this stuff: you'll just create your new repository, commit to create main (and rename to main if necessary), do a git remote add origin url, and git push origin main.

(You can then, if you wish, use git remote set-head origin --auto, although I personally find no value here.)

Long

OK, first, don't do this at all:

git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD refs/remotes/origin/main && \

It's not inherently wrong but it has no value.¹ It has nothing to do with the errors you're getting, but removing it gets one more step out of the way and removes distractions from your view.

With that said, I think your problem stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of Git: of what it does, why, and how. To fix that, let's take a quick overview of Git repositories.

¹I'm of the opinion that the existence of refs/remotes/origin/HEAD itself has no value to begin with, but even if you disagree, you should be using git remote or git ls-remote to obtain their symbolic HEAD here, rather than hard-coding main. Your remote-tracking names are supposed to reflect their branch names as they exist now, not as you wish they existed.