You May Want to First Integrate the Remote Changes Eg git Pull Before Pushing Again

If not, don't worry — after reading this article, yous volition.

We will intermission it downward into 6 parts:

1. Why is git push non working?
2. What happens when you Force Push
3. Is Force Push bad do? What can I do instead?
4. When should I use Strength Push?
5. How to recover from a Force Push disaster
6. How to prevent a Force Push mishap in the future

Let'southward dive in!

one. Why Is git button Not Working?

Here'due south a simple scenario: you are working on the same branch as Joe. You both pulled the latest version from the remote repository in the morning and started working. So far, and so skilful.

Joe has finished his task and pushed his work to the remote repo. Joe is on his way to the gym and you carry on with your assignment. You lot conclude your work, and now just need to run git button to end your day.

Sadly, an fault message is displayed in your concluding window, similar to this:

          ! [rejected]   main -> main (fetch first) fault: failed to push some refs to ... hint: Updates were rejected because the remote contains work that yous exercise hint: non have locally. This is commonly acquired by another repository pushing hint: to the same ref. You may want to beginning integrate the remote changes hint: (east.thou., 'git pull ...') before pushing again. hint: See the 'Annotation almost fast-forwards' in 'git button --assist' for details.        

Well, why is it not working?

Dissimilar other version control systems, Git does not allow any conflicts on the remote repository. This is a good thing because information technology reassures you that the repo is in a healthy country at all times.

You won't exist overwriting commits from the team by accident merely, at the same fourth dimension, this means you volition always need to pull any outstanding changes before pushing your work. And since Joe committed his piece of work in the concurrently, the repo's history inverse and y'all aren't upwardly to date anymore.

If you have a look at Git's official documentation, you lot volition apace find that y'all can force this command. You lot tin can apply the --force flag (or -f for brusque).

This can await similar an easy workaround when the git push command does not work, but it is rarely recommended — it's not the default beliefs for a reason.

In the scenario in a higher place, if you forcefulness push your work, you will erase Joe'south commit from the remote repo. Joe won't be happy when he'due south back from the gym!

Does this mean that nosotros should avoid Force Pushing at all costs? Not necessarily. Allow's start past understanding what'south happening in the background…

two. What Happens When You Strength Push

Every time you Force Button, you're basically rewriting history. Ever seen a movie where the graphic symbol goes back in time, changes history, and everything goes well? Me neither.

Whenever y'all run the git push command, Git has a look at your local repository and copies to the remote side whatever is missing. This includes commits, trees, blobs, and tags (the last of which are not pushed past default).

After copying the missing content, Git attempts to overwrite the current master with the latest commit. This overwrite is allowed if the change is a "fast forward", that is, if the former master commit is an ancestor of the new main commit.

If there is a linear path, the command succeeds. When it'due south non allowed (virtually likely because the remote repo looked different from yours, apart from your new commits), the control fails.

The command will always succeed, notwithstanding, if you resort to the --strength flag. Y'all volition overwrite the remote's commit history with your local 1, regardless of how dissimilar it looks.

As y'all tin come across, this is a powerful control — but, every bit a famous web-slinger once taught us, "with great power comes great responsibleness".

So should you lot utilise it?

3. Is Force Push Bad Practice? What Can I Exercise Instead?

There are some situations where running git push --force really makes sense, simply on most occasions, you should stay abroad from typing it. It's rarely the all-time approach to the trouble.

There are 2 big reasons for this:

1. There's a high hazard you overwrite commits from your colleagues, resulting in lost work;
2. There's a high take chances your colleagues will be developing their piece of work based on the onetime commit history.

In short, even if y'all get abroad with Strength Pushing in one case or twice, it'south only a matter of fourth dimension until something goes incorrect. Time to look for an alternative!

Strength with Charter — A Safer Alternative

To make sure you don't ever overwrite your teammate'due south commits, you can have a wait at --force-with-lease flag, which is essentially a safer, lesser-known, option.

If somebody has updated the branch upstream while you were working on something, you can rest assured that everything will be intact, as the control will fail and prompt you to fetch first. This way, everyone'southward work is preserved.

In our Git client, this was integrated into Tower'due south 6.3 release so that our users always have their seatbelts on!

Force Push with Lease in Tower

Executing git push button --force-with-charter by default is something we would recommend 99% of the time, simply there are still situations where Force Pushing could brand sense.

Let's look into them now.

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4. When Should I Utilise Force Push?

As a rule of thumb, you lot should only Forcefulness Button when you're absolutely sure you know what you're doing.

Hither are a couple of scenarios where Strength Push would make sense:

Scenario 1: Sensitive Information Uploaded to the Repo by Accident

You lot noticed there'due south a file that contains sensitive information (eg: a password). You don't want that data publicly accessible and you want to delete that file altogether. This happened 6 commits agone.

Yous could utilize Interactive Rebase to remove that commit from your project, and so you would accept to Force Push it to the remote repository to brand certain that it is deleted for everyone else when your colleagues update the local version via git pull.

This mode, the sensitive information will eventually disappear. Please go on in mind that, if this was a pull request from someone else, that request will even so be visible until the original author deleted it.

Scenario two: You lot Don't Want to Deal With Merge Conflicts

Things got messy, but the working version in your local machine is the one that should exist going forward — y'all know it, and your squad knows it. If you want to prioritize your local branch over the remote one, overwriting any commits made along the way, then past all means become for it.

In a less farthermost situation, Force Pushing tin however be appropriate. Sometimes we're simply working on a private branch that should non exist used by anyone else. Before merging/moving to a branch that a group of people interact on, it may brand sense to perform a little make clean-upwardly and force push (this is also a mutual use case for pull requests in open source projects).

Every bit y'all can see, in some situations Force Pushing can be your friend. If you are using Tower, our Git client, the "force" flag is bachelor every bit an selection in Tower's Push dialog:

Force Push in Tower

5. How to Recover from a Force Push button Disaster

An accidental Forcefulness Push can happen to any developer, no affair how experienced. Luckily, like most things in Git, there's (almost) always a way to go your work dorsum.

If yous are currently in the centre of a Force Push panic attack, don't keep information technology to yourself. Let the team know, to make sure that no one messes with the repository. And, if possible, don't shut the terminal window.

If yous are aware of a colleague who is working on the aforementioned repo, outset by request if he/she has pulled a contempo version of the co-operative simply before you messed it upward. If and then, you are 1 push --forcefulness abroad from restoring things dorsum to normal.

If you weren't so lucky, have a await at your terminal window (if information technology is still open). In the output of git push --forcefulness, notice a line similar to this:

          + last-good-commit...f00f00ba principal -> main (forced update)        

In this example, "last-good-commit" is your last proficient commit earlier everything went wrong. Simply run git button --force origin last-skilful-commit:primary to restore everything as information technology was.

Did you already close the concluding? Fourth dimension to learn about Git Reflog.

Recovering Your Work with Git Reflog

Git Reflog is a very handy command that outputs a detailed history of your repository. Each line is a reference log (reflog, get it?) listing any updates to branches and other references. This can exist very useful when information technology'due south time to specify an old value of a reference.

We will take to start by running git reflog and finding the line where everything was fine and bully. You will have an output similar to this:

          1ff3ff5 (Caput -> main, origin/main) HEAD@{0}: commit: Add more than content to page 9f8bf71 HEAD@{1}: commit: Add CTA button 4e12f64 Head@{two}: commit: Add reset.css 549c6f0 Caput@{3}: commit: Add h1 title e0fcb3b Caput@{4}: commit: Add info to certificate (Finish)        

You will meet the term "Caput" a lot. This is the tip of the branch you're currently on. Next to information technology, yous will find numbers, like Caput@{3}, which represent the number of steps until that action.

To gyre back to the state we want, nosotros could run git reset --hard Head@{iii} and run git push--forcefulness again.

Restoring a Co-operative Deleted with Force Push

In a more than extreme scenario, where the branch has been deleted, information technology is still possible to recover your work. Nosotros will demand to find the commits, just like in the previous case, simply we volition use a different tool: git-fsck.

Git performs many actions in the background to prevent the loss of information. When y'all run this control, you tin access 2 things:

1. Dangling hulk: a modify that reached the staging area but never got committed.
2. Dangling commit: a commit that isn't directly linked to by any kid commit, branch, tag, or other reference.

Since your branch is now gone, you're looking for dangling commits. You can run git fsck —-lost-plant to rails them down.

Finally, just similar in the previous stride, you volition need to discover the commit before the disaster happened, reset to that commit via git reset, and run git push button--force again.

6. How to Prevent a Forcefulness Push Mishap in the Future

As a dominion, try to avoid Strength Pushing into whatsoever important branches, like main. It's always a adept thought to avoid whatever sort of experiments in the repository'southward main branch.

This is great advice but, unfortunately, like shooting fish in a barrel to forget. And then, to make sure you lot minimize the chances of facing another Forcefulness Push disaster, practise the post-obit:

Default to --forcefulness-with-lease as much as you can

As mentioned in Affiliate iii, --force-with-lease is similar --force with a safety vest. The control will always fail if someone has pushed to the same branch you were working on and you were out of appointment. If y'all rely on the command line, that's a good default to banking company on.

You lot tin set up up a new alias in your "gitconfig" file to run this command without typing and so many characters. If you have never edited this file, it is commonly located at ~/.gitconfig on UNIX systems and C:\Users\\.gitconfig on Windows.

Afterward opening it, take a await and see if you take any [alias] section already in identify. If it doesn't exist, simply add this to the end of the file:

          [allonym]     pfl = button --force-with-charter        

If you have Zsh and Oh My Zsh installed, in that location's already an alias created for you lot: ggfl.

If you're using our Git customer exclusively, you don't have to worry: whenever you lot force push and in that location's already a newer commit on the remote, you will exist presented with a warning. This way, you will always be aware the remote repository has changed and can human action accordingly.

If you combine a Git GUI like Tower with the CLI, in that location's one thing yous should keep in heed. When Belfry is running in the background, it automatically fetches a remote. If your colleague makes changes, Tower auto-fetches and yous run push --forcefulness-with-lease on the CLI, yous will still overwrite these commits. For this reason, we check if at that place are unmerged commits on the remote co-operative and present a warning if we detect whatsoever.

Employ Protected Branches

If you're hosting your remote repository on GitHub, yous tin use GitHub's Protected Branches.

Past default, GitHub volition block strength pushes on all protected branches, so you will just demand to decide which branches should be protected. You can read GitHub's documentation to learn how to create a branch protection rule.

Protected branches are available in public repositories with GitHub Free and GitHub Costless for organizations, and in public and private repositories with GitHub Pro, GitHub Team, GitHub Enterprise Deject, and GitHub Enterprise Server.

If you ever need to gear up annihilation, you lot tin can still let forcefulness pushes temporarily — merely go along in mind that anyone with push admission will be able to do this.

GitLab has a similar feature, available in all tiers. The default co-operative for your repository is protected by default.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, Forcefulness Push button is a very powerful command in Git — nosotros only take to brand sure we use information technology with care (Tower will e'er warn you in case something risky is about to happen).

In this article, we take presented the risks of Strength Pushing, scenarios where information technology is a necessity, and how to recover (or prevent) disasters in the future. We accept also learned almost a safer culling (--force-with-lease) that you can default to on nigh occasions.

If y'all got this far, congrats! You are officially a Strength Push button ninja!

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Source: https://www.git-tower.com/blog/force-push-in-git/

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