Question

I tried creating remote branch devel using:

git push origin origin:refs/heads/devel

But it fails with:

error: src refspec devel does not match any.
error: failed to push some refs to 'git@***.com:***/abcd.git'

What’s going on?

EDIT:
I am following: This Tutorial

Answer 1

If devel is your local branch, then this is sufficient:

git push origin devel

Your example doesn’t work, because you try to push “origin” branch to remote repository (“origin”), but you don’t have branch named “origin” (first origin here) in local repository.

You can run:

git push origin devel:refs/heads/devel
#               ^     ^
#               |     +---- it's ref for remote branch to create
#               +---------- it's local branch name

This second form is preferred if you local branch name should differ from remote branch name.