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This article outlines different methods we can use to resolve the Fatal: The Current Branch Master Has No Upstream Branch error. We usually encounter this error when we create a new local branch, make some commits, and try to push to the remote repository.

By default, Git is not configured to create corresponding branches in the remote repository when we create them in the local repository.

Let’s look at three methods you can use to fix the error.

Fix the Fatal: The Current Branch Master Has No Upstream Branch error

For the sake of a simple walkthrough, we'll simulate a scenario where we get the fatal: Current branch master has no upstream branches error on Git by creating a new branch in our local repository, making some commits and trying to push.

$ git checkout -b Dev2.1

We have made some changes and committed them. Let's try pushing to the remote repository

$ git push

Here are three methods we can use to fix this error.

The first method is the one recommended by Git. However, we strongly discourage its use as we will see shortly, but first let’s see how this command works.

To resolve the error we will run:

$ git push --set-upstream origin Dev2.1

This command sets up the Dev2.1 branch in our remote repository, which will track the local branch. However, this approach may cause unexpected and strange consequences in your repository.

Let's look at the second method.

You can also use:

$ git push -u origin Dev2.1

This command will create a remote branch with the same name as your local branch. If you encounter errors, add the all flag to the command as shown below.

$ git push -u origin --all

We prefer using the -u flag instead of git push --set-upstreamthe command.

The above methods solve the current problem. What if we want a permanent solution?

Fortunately, Git is very malleable; we can tweak the Git configuration files to get a permanent solution, which brings us to the third approach.

Run the following command to configure Git to create remote branches when we create local branches.

$ git config --global push.default current

We can now use git pushthe command alone without having to deal with this annoying error again.

To summarize, when we created a local branch, we did not configure Git to create a corresponding remote branch, and we got the fatal: The current branch master has no upstream branch error.

We have covered various methods that you can use to fix this error. You now know what to avoid.