Error with helpful message when publishing to Github pages and no gh-pages branch

news/changelog-1.4.md

@@ -207,6 +207,7 @@
 
 - ([#5436](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/5436)): Add support for publishing to Posit Cloud.
 - ([#5220](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/5220)): Properly respect `output-dir` when publishin individual files in a default Quarto project
+- ([#4498](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/4498)): Better error when `quarto publish gh-pages` fails because `gh-pages` branch does not exist on `origin` remote.
 
 ## Video (and Audio)
 

src/publish/gh-pages/gh-pages.ts

@@ -96,6 +96,10 @@ async function publishRecord(
       id: "gh-pages",
       url: ghContext.siteUrl || ghContext.originUrl,
     };
+  } else {
+    throwUnableToPublish(
+      'the remote origin does not have a branch named "gh-pages". Use first `quarto publish gh-pages` locally to initialize the remote repository for publishing.',
+    );
   }
 }