This post was most recently updated on November 12th, 2019.
Reading Time: 2 minutes.Ran into this one when trying to push my merge from upstream. I was adhering to my own instructions (see below for a link), but got the error (further below) that stopped me from using GitHub Desktop to push (sync) at all.
So, the error I ran into:
! [remote rejected] master -> master (refusing to allow an integration to create or update .github/workflows/main.yml) error: failed to push some refs to [repositoryname]
This was take weird – I hadn’t made any changes to said file, and I don’t think anyone else had, either.
This is likely an unintended feature of GitHub, and GitHub Desktop can’t do anything about it. However, there’s a nifty workaround available!
Solution
A number of GitHub issues propose that this issue can be circumvented by actually committing a change removing the yaml file in question from the repository. However, if you’re merging from an upstream repository, you don’t usually want to do this! So we need to find another way.
Whereas GitHub Desktop is using OAuth, and running into this issue, Git Bash (the console application you use to merge upstream in my earlier example as well) doesn’t. And it’s also free from this issue, as it’s not considered “an integration”, and whatever it’s trying to do (or not do) to the yaml file just works.
So, in short – instead of using GitHub Desktop, open Git bash and run this:
cd [yourprojectpath] # after this, make sure the command line shows the right branch name! git push
Et voila! You should be good.
References
- https://github.com/desktop/desktop/issues/6526
- https://github.com/cclauss/Upgrade-to-Python3/issues/1
Antti K. Koskela
He's been a developer from 2004 (starting with PHP and Java), and he's been bending and twisting SharePoint into different shapes since MOSS. Nowadays he's not only working on SharePoint, but also on .NET projects, Azure, Office 365 and a lot of other stuff. He's also Microsoft MVP for Office Development.
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I have the same problem in Git Bash on Windows 10. Any other suggestion?
Hi Philip,
Is the repository one where you can in fact remove the workflows/main.yaml file? This issue describes that as a workaround:
https://github.com/cclauss/Upgrade-to-Python3/issues/1
Are you merging or just pushing?
Oh, also: congrats on writing the 400. comment ever on my blog!
Thanks for your reply. Btw there is no .github/workflows/main.yaml or .github/main.workflow file in my repo. What I do is sync latest changes from upstream/master to my fork master branch. I already use git bash to call “git push” on Windows 10, it doesn’t work, what should I do?
Same story for me: merging from upstream, and no such file was modified (or was visible in the list of changed files either).
For me, using git bash helped, however. If you get the same error using it, that sounds really weird – the console client shouldn’t be limited in the same way a 3rd party tool (such as the desktop client) is.
What happens if you try and remove the workflow file(s) explicitly from your commit (ignoring the fact that they shouldn’t exist in the first place)?