I don’t know the exact reason why that happens. For me, it’s because I forget to pull the entire repository to my local. I have 2 or more path, and each path pulls from different branch
/path/branch_a/ -> pulled from branch A
/path/branch_b/ -> pulled from branch B
on branch A, I made a few modification, and commit as usual. I want that commit (for example the commit ID is abcdef123) appears on branch B, so I use
$ cd /path/branch_b/
$ git branch
master
branch_a
* branch_b
$ git cherry-pick abcdef123
This gives me that kind of error. So I need to pull the entire repository before getting that commit
$ git pull
remote: Counting objects: 257, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (58/58), done.
remote: Total 216 (delta 187), reused 186 (delta 158)
Receiving objects: 100% (216/216), 53.13 KiB | 43 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (187/187), completed with 38 local objects.
From github.com:username/my_repo
abcdef3..80c0d68 branch_a -> origin/branch_a
Already up-to-date.
$ git cherry-pick abcdef123
[branch_b ccddeef] Some commit message
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)