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Git Error - fatal: Not a valid object name: 'master'

·1 min

Overview #

In this article, I’ll describe a common Git error and how to resolve it.

fatal: Not a valid object name: ‘master’ #

This error happens when trying to create a branch when there is no master branch.

Let’s take a look at an example:

$ git init 
Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/amir/gitdemo/.git/ 
$ git branch feature-1 
fatal: Not a valid object name: 'master'.

A master branch is created after our first commit. Let’s commit a file and check the branch list:

$ touch test.txt
$ git add test.txt 
$ git commit -m "First commit" 
[master (root-commit) dffc881] First commit  
 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)  
 create mode 100644 test.txt 
$ git branch 
* master

Since master has been created, we can now create a branch:

$ git branch feature-1 
$ git checkout feature-1
Switched to branch 'feature-1'