Confusing git pull error message

[John Tapsell <johnflux@gmail.com>]

Hi,

  Because of another bug in git https, sometimes "git ls-remote
origin" only sees a small subset of the actually available branches.
This lasts until someone using git:// makes a commit.

  So anyway, I tried to do a "git pull" and it gives me the misleading error:

You asked me to pull without telling me which branch you
want to merge with, and 'branch.master.merge' in
your configuration file does not tell me either.  Please
name which branch you want to merge on the command line and
try again (e.g. 'git pull <repository> <refspec>').
See git-pull(1) for details on the refspec.

If you often merge with the same branch, you may want to
configure the following variables in your configuration
file:

    branch.master.remote = <nickname>
    branch.master.merge = <remote-ref>
    remote.<nickname>.url = <url>
    remote.<nickname>.fetch = <refspec>

See git-config(1) for details.



But the actual problem is that "master" doesn't exist on origin.  So
basically I _have_ told it what branch.master.remote and
branch.master.merge etc is, it's just that they don't appear to exist.

Thanks,

John