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

Question

I am trying to upload a Ruby app to Heroku. I start with git init and then I type git add . and then I use git commit -m initial commit.

Whenever I use git commit -m, I receive an error message saying:

git commit error:pathspect 'commit' did not match any file(s) known to git.

I have been told that this is happening because the arguments are in the wrong order.

The thing I noticed is that when I use git add . it will not list the files that are being added because it will just go to the next line.

I suspect that I am having this problem because my files are not really being added.

I would appreciate any advice about how to correct this problem.

Answer 1

The command line arguments are separated by space. If you want provide an argument with a space in it, you should quote it. So use git commit -m "initial commit".

Answer 2

I would just like to add--

In windows the commit message should be in double quotes (git commit -m "initial commit" instead of git commit -m 'initial commit'), as I spent about an hour, just to figure out that single quote is not working in windows.

Answer 3

In my case, this error was due to special characters what I was considering double quotes as I copied the command from a web page.

Answer 4

I figured out mistake here use double quotations instead of single quotations.

change this

git commit -m 'initial commit'

to

git commit -m "initial commit"

Answer 5

I have encounter the same problem. my syntax has no problem. What I found is that I copied and pasted git commit -m "comments" from my note. I retype it, the command execute without issue. It turns out the - and " " are the problem when I copy paste to terminal.

Answer 6

Had this happen to me when committing from Xcode 6, after I had added a directory of files and subdirectories to the project folder. The problem was that, in the Commit sheet, in the left sidebar, I had checkmarked not only the root directory that I had added, but all of its descendants too. To solve the problem, I checkmarked only the root directory. This also committed all of the descendants, as desired, with no error.

Answer 7

Type the command git commit -m "Initial Commit" yourself in the terminal/command prompt instead of copy and paste from web page. I believe this will help.

Answer 8

In my case, the problem was I used wrong alias for git commit -m. I used gcalias which dit not meant git commit -m

Answer 9

Solved! Here is how I solved this issue:

1. Made an app on Heroku first and prepared all the codes in local_folder to push into it.
2. Cloned the remote app using heroku git:clone -a app_name
3. then cd app_name
4. then copied all the codes into this folder from local_folder
5. then git add .
6. then git commit -am "initial commit"
7. then git push heroku master
8. Viola!

Answer 10

if there are anybodys using python os to invoke git,u can use os.system('git commit -m " '+str(comment)+'"')

Answer 11

In my case the problem was I had forgotten to add the switch -m before the quoted comment. It may be a common error too, and the error message received is exactly the same

Answer 12

Had the same problem. " or ' doesn't work for me.

In my case, i used git commit to add commit-msg. After this commit, git commit -m 'xxx' works as before.