How do I properly force a Git push?

Question

I've set up a remote non-bare "main" repo and cloned it to my computer. I made some local changes, updated my local repository, and pushed the changes back to my remote repo. Things were fine up to that point.

Now, I had to change something in the remote repo. Then I changed something in my local repo. I realized that the change to the remote repo was not needed. So I tried to git push from my local repo to my remote repo, but I got an error like:

To prevent you from losing history, non-fast-forward updates were rejected Merge the remote changes before pushing again. See the 'Note about fast-forwards' section of git push --help for details.

I thought that probably a

git push --force

would force my local copy to push changes to the remote one and make it the same. It does force the update, but when I go back to the remote repo and make a commit, I notice that the files contain outdated changes (ones that the main remote repo previously had).

As I mentioned in the comments to one of the answers:

[I] tried forcing, but when going back to master server to save the changes, i get outdated staging. Thus, when i commit the repositories are not the same. And when i try to use git push again, i get the same error.

How can I fix this issue?

Solution 1

Just do:

git push origin <your_branch_name> --force

or if you have a specific repo:

git push https://git.... --force

This will delete your previous commit(s) and push your current one.

It may not be proper, but if anyone stumbles upon this page, thought they might want a simple solution...

Short flag

Also note that -f is short for --force, so

git push origin <your_branch_name> -f

will also work.

Solution 2

And if push --force doesn't work you can do push --delete. Look at 2^nd line on this instance:

git reset --hard HEAD~3  # reset current branch to 3 commits ago
git push origin master --delete  # do a very very bad bad thing
git push origin master  # regular push

But beware...

Never ever go back on a public git history!

In other words:

• Don't ever force push on a public repository.
• Don't do this or anything that can break someone's pull.
• Don't ever reset or rewrite history in a repo someone might have already pulled.

Of course there are exceptionally rare exceptions even to this rule, but in most cases it's not needed to do it and it will generate problems to everyone else.

Do a revert instead.

And always be careful with what you push to a public repo. Reverting:

git revert -n HEAD~3..HEAD  # prepare a new commit reverting last 3 commits
git commit -m "sorry - revert last 3 commits because I was not careful"
git push origin master  # regular push

In effect, both origin HEADs (from the revert and from the evil reset) will contain the same files.

---

edit to add updated info and more arguments around push --force

Consider pushing force with lease instead of push, but still prefer revert

Another problem push --force may bring is when someone push anything before you do, but after you've already fetched. If you push force your rebased version now you will replace work from others.

git push --force-with-lease introduced in the git 1.8.5 (thanks to @VonC comment on the question) tries to address this specific issue. Basically, it will bring an error and not push if the remote was modified since your latest fetch.

This is good if you're really sure a push --force is needed, but still want to prevent more problems. I'd go as far to say it should be the default push --force behaviour. But it's still far from being an excuse to force a push. People who fetched before your rebase will still have lots of troubles, which could be easily avoided if you had reverted instead.

And since we're talking about git --push instances...

Why would anyone want to force push?

@linquize brought a good push force example on the comments: sensitive data. You've wrongly leaked data that shouldn't be pushed. If you're fast enough, you can "fix"* it by forcing a push on top.

* The data will still be on the remote unless you also do a garbage collect, or clean it somehow. There is also the obvious potential for it to be spread by others who'd fetched it already, but you get the idea.

Solution 3

If I'm on my local branch A, and I want to force push local branch B to the origin branch C I can use the following syntax:

git push --force origin B:C

Solution 4

use this following command:

git push -f origin master

Solution 5

First of all, I would not make any changes directly in the "main" repo. If you really want to have a "main" repo, then you should only push to it, never change it directly.

Regarding the error you are getting, have you tried git pull from your local repo, and then git push to the main repo? What you are currently doing (if I understood it well) is forcing the push and then losing your changes in the "main" repo. You should merge the changes locally first.

View more solutions

Comments

[VonC]

You will soon (git1.8.5, Q4 2013) be able to do a git push -force more carefully.

[Admin]

Related: Force git to overwrite remote files on push.

[Admin]

As I detail in my own answer, git push --force is indeed another valid way to force push, and will push branches just as well as git push origin master --force with Git's default push.default config settings, though which branches specifically get pushed differs between Git versions prior to 2.0 versus after 2.0.

[rogerdpack]

git push --force works fine these days, FWIW...

[spoorcc]

git push --force-with-lease works even better :), it will refuse to update a branch unless it is the state that you expect. (see developer.atlassian.com/blog/2015/04/force-with-lease)

[Sumit]

just be careful folks > When you force push code to the master branch [remote repo] it deletes the previous code present in the master branch . > and force update your code with the previous code. i.e when you force push previous code will bereplace by your code. [check out this blog for more info ](evilmartians.com/chronicles/…) Happy Coding :)

[Spyros]

yes i tried a pull but i'm losing losing data because of that pull. I want to make my main repos as my local is, without first updating from the main.

[ubik]

In that case use git push -f, but then if you change your main repo again, you have to go back to your local repo and git pull, so that it gets in sync with the latest changes. Then you can do your work, and push again. If you follow this "push-pull" workflow, you won't get the kind of error you were complaining about.

[Spyros]

yeah, i understand that this was my fault :/ I will try that and get back in a little while thanx

[Spyros]

tried forcing, but when going back to master server to save the changes, i get outdated staging. Thus, when i commit the repositories are not the same. And when i try to use git push again, i get the same error.

[rogerdpack]

Looks like it's possible to do a pull after this, but hard stackoverflow.com/questions/9813816/…

[cregox]

The problem, @rogerdpack, isn't if it's doable. It is. But it can sum up to a big disaster. The more someone do it (force push) and the less often you update (pull) from the public repo, the bigger the disaster. It can dismantle the world as you know it!!!111 At least the world comprising of that particular repository.

[nickgrim]

You can use git push origin +master instead, which allow you push multiple refspecs without forcing them all.

[linquize]

If you have sensitive data, force push it

[cregox]

@linquize not following. I'd say if you have sensitive data, revert it.

[Stuart Golodetz]

@Cawas: I think he means that if you are trying to remove sensitive data from the repository, then you want to rewrite history. If you revert, the sensitive data is still there in the earlier commit. That said, if someone else has already pulled from the repository, then rewriting history won't help you prevent them from accessing the sensitive data - it's already too late at that point.

[cregox]

@StuartGolodetz thanks for clarifying! I completely misinterpreted "sensitive" there - I was thinking just "important" and not "classified".

[Can Poyrazoğlu]

git push origin master --delete # do a very very bad bad thing git push origin master # regular push this actually solved my problem perfectly (on a repo with only me and my friend). maybe it's wrong for public repos but for a private one this is a life saver.

[Jeewes]

Be aware that, if you accidentally do just git push --force, you might end up messing you master branch (depending on your push default behavior).. Which might suck.. a bit.. :D

[Admin]

@Jeewes starting with Git version 2.0, the default behavior of git push --force is basically to force push the currently checked-out branch to its remote-counter part, so if you have the master branch checked out, then it's identical to git push origin master --force. It'll be different if you're using the matching setting for push.default, which is the default for Git versions prior to 2.0. matching pushes all locals branches to remote ones that have the same name, so force pushing then could definitely be not what you want to do...

[Admin]

@Jeewes But with Git 2.0, the default is safer, or at least it's no more dangerous than git push origin master --force is.

[Joe]

There is also the case that you are not pushing to a public server. You are pushing to some other repo to build on a dev box or something, and no one is interested in the old version of your work.

[Weishi Z]

I found out that even I'm on my local branch B, I still need to do git push --force origin B:C. In my case, it seems that git push --force origin C will only push from local master to remote C branch, regardless of which branch I'm currently on. git version 2.3.8 (Apple Git-58)

[Peter Krauss]

Oops, not worked for mee (!), but I used git push -f , is not the same?? See (need to correct?) stackoverflow.com/a/10728449/287948

[Abhishek]

Why would anyone want to force push? May be someone has made a commit that you want to discard completely. stackoverflow.com/questions/37132584/…

[mihai]

push -f is good but not recoomended for master since most corporate repositories have -f disabled for master. the merge -s ours worked for me

[Adam]

Maybe give some more explanation about why this answer is preferable to the other ones, and what makes it different.

[mustafa Elsayed]

oh ,sorry for inconvenience , I was having the same problem and this command solve it , i thought i should share it .

[svelandiag]

It's just the same as the others, you just changed the position of the -f flag...

[Autumn Leonard]

More generally: git push -f <remote> <branch>

[chovy]

unfortunately on gitlab you will still have old history.

[FlavorScape]

this happens automatically with some repo managers, a.k.a. auto-squash etc. force pushing after finishing a feature branch to reduce commits is common and expected.

[LargeDachshund]

Don't forget that your remote repo permissions (read: Azure DevOps) for your account, might not grant permission to force push. In that case, you'll need an administrator to set your permissions.

[hd1]

Can you even push to a non-bare git repository?

[VonC]

@hd1 Yes, since Git 2.4 (Q2 2015): stackoverflow.com/a/42745909/6309, which references stackoverflow.com/a/34575157/6309.

[Ícaro]

This helped me when moving a repository from the previous master branch to the new main branch. Just used master:main and it worked as I needed!

[openCivilisation]

--force-with-lease is a better option because it will not push if the state of the remote has changed since the last pull

[Eric Aya]

This has already been mentioned in several other answers.