Git push rejected after feature branch rebase Git push rejected after feature branch rebase git git

Git push rejected after feature branch rebase


The problem is that git push assumes that remote branch can be fast-forwarded to your local branch, that is that all the difference between local and remote branches is in local having some new commits at the end like that:

Z--X--R         <- origin/some-branch (can be fast-forwarded to Y commit)       \                T--Y    <- some-branch

When you perform git rebase commits D and E are applied to new base and new commits are created. That means after rebase you have something like that:

A--B--C------F--G--D'--E'   <- feature-branch       \          D--E                <- origin/feature-branch

In that situation remote branch can't be fast-forwarded to local. Though, theoretically local branch can be merged into remote (obviously you don't need it in that case), but as git push performs only fast-forward merges it throws and error.

And what --force option does is just ignoring state of remote branch and setting it to the commit you're pushing into it. So git push --force origin feature-branch simply overrides origin/feature-branch with local feature-branch.

In my opinion, rebasing feature branches on master and force-pushing them back to remote repository is OK as long as you're the only one who works on that branch.


Instead of using -f or --force developers should use

--force-with-lease

Why? Because it checks the remote branch for changes which is absolutely a good idea. Let's imagine that James and Lisa are working on the same feature branch and Lisa has pushed a commit. James now rebases his local branch and is rejected when trying to push. Of course James thinks this is due to rebase and uses --force and would rewrite all Lisa's changes. If James had used --force-with-lease he would have received a warning that there are commits done by someone else. I don't see why anyone would use --force instead of --force-with-lease when pushing after a rebase.


I would use instead "checkout -b" and it is easier to understand.

git checkout myFeaturegit rebase mastergit push origin --delete myFeaturegit push origin myFeature

when you delete you prevent to push in an exiting branch that contains different SHA ID.I am deleting only the remote branch in this case.