Remote rejected (shallow update not allowed) after changing Git remote URL

Question

I have a project under Git version control that I worked on both a server and my local computer. I originally had the remote origin set as my local computer but I would now like to change that to BitBucket.

On the server I used the command

git remote set-url origin bitbucket_address

But now when I try to push my project I get the error

 ! [remote rejected] master -> master (shallow update not allowed)

What is causing this and how do I fix it?

Answer 1

As it seems you have used git clone --depth <number> to clone your local version. This results in a shallow clone. One limitation of such a clone is that you can't push from it into a new repository.

You now have two options:

1. if you don't care about you're current or missing history, take a look at this question
2. if you want to keep your full history, then continue reading:

So, you want to keep your history, eh? This means that you have to unshallow your repository. To do so you will need to add your old remote again.

git remote add old <path-to-old-remote>

After that we use git fetch to fetch the remaining history from the old remote (as suggested in this answer).

git fetch --unshallow old

And now you should be able to push into your new remote repository.

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Note: After unshallowing your clone you can obviously remove the old remote again.