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
    6 Things You Didn’t Know About Firefox OS

    Firefox OS is all over the tech news and for good reason:  Mozilla's finally given web developers the platform that they need to create apps the way they've been creating them for years -- with CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.  Firefox OS has been rapidly improving...

  • By
    Designing for Simplicity

    Before we get started, it's worth me spending a brief moment introducing myself to you. My name is Mark (or @integralist if Twitter happens to be your communication tool of choice) and I currently work for BBC News in London England as a principal engineer/tech...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    HTML5’s placeholder Attribute

    HTML5 has introduced many features to the browser;  some HTML-based, some in the form of JavaScript APIs, but all of them useful.  One of my favorites if the introduction of the placeholder attribute to INPUT elements.  The placeholder attribute shows text in a field until the...

  • By
    Image Reflections with CSS

    Image reflection is a great way to subtly spice up an image.  The first method of creating these reflections was baking them right into the images themselves.  Within the past few years, we've introduced JavaScript strategies and CANVAS alternatives to achieve image reflections without...

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!