git push merge error, but git pull is already up-to-date. Tried reclone, same problem

Question

I do:

$ git commit .
$ git push
error: Entry \'file.php\' not uptodate. Cannot merge.

Then I do

$ git pull
Already up-to-date.
         


        

Answer 1

This is just a hunch, but was your remote a bare repo or a working directory? If it was a working directory rather than a bare repo, the file.php file on the remote had uncommitted changes. Your git push command was trying to advance the HEAD at the remote which was causing conflicts due to the uncommitted changes.

This is why you usually git pull to update a working directory, and use git push on bare repos. FYI, to setup a bare repo for use as something similar to a central CVS/SVN/etc repo, do the following on the remote:

$ mkdir my-git-repo
$ cd my-git-repo
$ git init --bare

Then in your local repo:

$ cd my-git-repo.git
$ git remote add origin user@host:/path/to/my-git-repo/
$ git config branch.master.remote origin
$ git config branch.master.merge refs/heads/master
$ git push origin master

Now you have a bare repo to push/pull into/from that contains your master branch. You can repeat the last three local steps with any additional local branches you want to put on the remote. Cloning is the same as before and you don't need to use git config as remotes are set automatically and remote merging refs are set when you use tracking branches.

Hope that helps.