github_deploy broken if no remote gh-pages branch

[talos]

If you just started out with Nikola and your remote doesn't have a gh-pages branch yet (which will be the case for most people), then github_deploy crashes with:

ERROR: github_deploy: Failed GitHub deployment — command ['git', 'pull', 'origin', 'gh-pages:gh-pages'] returned 1

Since git pull origin gh-pages:gh-pages won't work if there's no remote gh-pages branch. This is a big problem, because creating and pushing the blank branch is possible but nontrivial, and is one of the main automation "bonuses" of having a nikola github_deploy in the first place.

[talos]

A workaround, for the time being, is to do the following (with a clean repo, of course!) with a new project before using github_deploy:

git checkout --orphan gh-pages
git rm -rf .
git commit --allow-empty -m 'first commit'
git push origin gh-pages:gh-pages
git checkout master

[Kwpolska]

We'll just nuke that git pull or at least make it optional.

Chris “Kwpolska” Warrick http://chriswarrick.com/
Sent from my Galaxy S3.
On Oct 30, 2014 9:22 PM, "john krauss" notifications@github.com wrote:

A workaround, for the time being, is to do the following (with a clean
repo, of course!) with a new project before using github_deploy:

git checkout --orphan gh-pages
git rm -rf .
git commit --allow-empty -m 'first commit'
git push origin gh-pages:gh-pages
git checkout master

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#1464 (comment).

[talos]

Another possibility would be to git pull ... || echo "Could not pull" or somesuch, to ignore a non-zero exit from the pull (essentially using it when possible, but ignoring it otherwise.)

[Kwpolska]

That we can’t do. A setting will work, though.

See #1468.

[jean]

I encountered the missing remote branch issue too, and wrote a Hello World which details the steps I followed to get started.