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

[asthagangwar3]

using svn2git for migrating svn to git but getting below error,

\MYProject\Demo>svn2git https://shwetakhai-w10.cybage.com:8443/svn/SVN2GIT/ --authors authors.txt -v
Running command: git svn init --prefix=svn/ --no-metadata --trunk='trunk' --tags='tags' --branches='branches' https://shwetakhai-w10.cybage.com:8443/svn/SVN2GIT/
Initialized empty Git repository in D:/MYProject/Demo/.git/
Running command: git config --local --get user.name
Running command: git config --local svn.authorsfile authors.txt
Running command: git svn fetch
Running command: git branch -l --no-color
Running command: git branch -r --no-color
Running command: git config --local --get user.name
Running command: git config --local --get user.email
Running command: git checkout -f master
error: pathspec 'master' did not match any file(s) known to git
command failed:
git checkout -f master

Had the same issue and svn2git didn't work for me at all.

I managed to migrate using the steps outlined here
https://gist.github.com/leftclickben/322b7a3042cbe97ed2af

[swaroopbekal]

Looks like git svn fetch failed. You can try to figure out why it failed by running it manually.

[ams-tschoening]

Current versions of GIT don't create a master branch anymore by default, but a main one. It might simply happen that your tooling is recent enough that svn2git doesn't support this change anymore.

https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2021/03/10/new-git-default-branch-name/

[zedseven]

To add to the comment above, you may be able to get around this by running git config --global init.defaultBranch master and re-running svn2git. (make sure to change it back to main afterwards if that's something you care about)

I'm attempting this currently, but it'll be another 16 hours before I know if it was successful, since this error occurs after the git svn fetch. :)

[zedseven]

It doesn't seem like my previous suggestion worked (after another ~16 hours).

I forked this repo and changed it so that it looks for main now instead of master – I'm going to try that, and anyone else is welcome to try it too: https://github.com/zedseven/svn2git

[JokaHD]

Hi @zedseven,

I've test your forked repo on my svn repo successfully after I update git to the latest version and add --nobranches .
Thanks!!

[skull-squadron]

Instead of getting into default branch name holy wars or a compatibility excretion contest by making a fragile assumption, I've found this pattern to work without modifying svn2git:

mkdir {{your_repo}}
cd {{your_repo}}
git init -b master
svn2git ....

This has the advantage of not modifying git global defaults or changing svn2git which would require multiple layers of up- and downstream release processes to arrive as a standard system package. A more robust fix would be for svn2git to check which branch git created rather than assuming it because it will break in environments where the default branch is something else.