git Force Push

By  on  

Rebasing is a frequent task for anyone using git. We sometimes use rebasing to branch our code from the last changes or even just to drop commits from a branch.

Oftentimes when trying to push after a rebase, you'll see something like the following:

hint: Updates were rejected because the tip of your current branch is behind
hint: its remote counterpart. Integrate the remote changes (e.g.
hint: 'git pull ...') before pushing again.
hint: See the 'Note about fast-forwards' in 'git push --help' for details.

Commonly developers will use the --force or -f flags during a push to force pushing code changes:

git push origin my-branch --force
# or
git push origin my-branch -f

I was recently surprised to find out that you could also prefix the branch name with + to force a push:

git push origin +my-branch

The + syntax is interesting but doesn't seem intuitive so it's not a practice I'd use, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't!

Recent Features

  • By
    Welcome to My New Office

    My first professional web development was at a small print shop where I sat in a windowless cubical all day. I suffered that boxed in environment for almost five years before I was able to find a remote job where I worked from home. The first...

  • By
    How I Stopped WordPress Comment Spam

    I love almost every part of being a tech blogger:  learning, preaching, bantering, researching.  The one part about blogging that I absolutely loathe:  dealing with SPAM comments.  For the past two years, my blog has registered 8,000+ SPAM comments per day.  PER DAY.  Bloating my database...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    MooTools Font-Size Scroller with Cookie Save

    Providing users as many preferences as possible always puts a smile on the user's face. One of those important preferences is font size. I can see fine but the next guy may have difficulty with the font size I choose. That's why...

  • By
    MooTools CountDown Plugin

    There are numerous websites around the internet, RapidShare for example, that make you wait an allotted amount of time before presenting you with your reward. Using MooTools, I've created a CountDown plugin that allows you to easily implement a similar system. The MooTools JavaScript The CountDown class...

Discussion

  1. Thanks for the tip about the prefix, this is an interesting shortcut!

    In most cases the --force-with-lease option seems safer in case there are some additional commits as well: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-push#Documentation/git-push.txt—no-force-with-lease

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!