Title: How to Force Put in GiT – Complete Tutorial
Description: This article will help our readers understand the concept of Force Pushing and how to Force Put in Git.
Sometimes, you may experience local changes that are not compatible with remote modifications (i.e., you cannot move the remote branch forward, as the remote branch isn’t directly related to the local branch). The only method to drive your change is with a force push. And this will erase any changes made by the remote, so the remote will match the local.
The use of this command may cause the remote repository to lose commits. Furthermore, if you share this remote repository with anyone else, you should avoid using force push because the history of their repository will contain every written commit, which may render their work incompatible with the remote repository.
Don’t be afraid; every problem has a solution, and I’ll show you how to use the Force of Git to save time and energy.
What is Force Pushing?
Git stops you from overwriting the history of the central repository by denying push requests if they lead to non-fast-forward merging. If your remote history diverged from yours, it is necessary to take the remote branch out and merge it with your local repository before attempting to push again. And this is the same as the way SVN allows you to synchronize to the repository centrally by using the SVN update process before making changes.
The –force flag alters this feature and allows the remote repository’s branch to coincide with your local repository by deleting any changes that have taken place since you last pulled. The only reason you’ll ever have a push to be forced is if you realize that the changes you shared aren’t entirely correct, and you fix the issue using commit –amend in Git or an interactive Rebase. However, you should use the force option to ensure that none of your colleagues have already pulled those commits.
Why should one not use push –force?
It’s widely known that Git’s push-force option is highly discouraged since it could cause damage to other commits that have already been transferred into an open repository. It’s not always destructive (if the changes occur in the working tree of someone else, it could combine them); however, at a minimum, it’s unwise and at best dangerous. And this is due to the option to force the branch’s head to focus on your personal history and ignore any changes that might occur in conjunction with your own.
One of the most frequent reasons for force pushes is when we’re forced to change branches.
How to use it safely?
Because it’s straightforward to degrade or even hinder the work of your colleagues, here are a few “safety rules” around git push–Force:
Use it only for a shared history. If you’ve pushed commits on a branch shared with the team, try to avoid using the force push. If you’re on the other hand, it was on a feature branch, and if you are the only one using it, you are at ease to take a step onto the gas and choose the option to force.
Consider using git revert instead—the primary requirement for a tool to rectify a mistake you’ve already made remains. But, you should consider employing a tool that will not modify the history of commits using tools like git revert, as an instance. And this is an easier way to undo the mistake.
Choose force-with-lease over force. The push command comes with an additional option called “force-with-lease.” And this will ensure that you’re not rewriting others’ work by displaying an error message and will refuse to push if the remote has been modified since the last time you downloaded it.
How to Use –force-with-lease?
What it does is refuse to update the branch unless it’s in the state we would expect; i.e., there is no update to the branch downstream. In reality, this is done by ensuring that the downstream ref matches what we would expect, as refs are hashes that, in turn, encode the parent chain into their values.
It is possible to tell exactly what it should look for, but by default, it checks the remote ref currently in use. And this means that if you change the branch and transfer it to the remote repository, the ref pointing to this branch will be changed. So, unless your coworker pulls from the remote, their local reference to the remote is outdated. If they attempt to push with force-with-lease Git will compare the ref in the remote’s local file against the latest remote and deny the push. The force-with-lease option allows the force-push opportunity if another person has pushed changes to the remote during the time. It’s –force when the seatbelt is in place.
Force applies to all refs which are pushed, therefore using it in conjunction with push is recommended. It is set to match by using multiple destinations for the push that are configured using the remote. *.push can overwrite refs other than the currently used branch (including the local ones that lie purely behind their remote counterparts). To ensure that a push is only for one branch, put a + before the refspec you want to push (e.g., pull origin + master to make a push only to master).
Keep in mind to Use Force with Lease
If a regular push is not practical, it is unnecessary to force if they’re doing practical day-to-day tasks. Everyday needs are met by using the use of Force with a release. These are any Rebases. Specifically, the rebase of a branch on another branch, rewording an earlier commit or squashing a couple of commits together, reordering your commits, or changing the person’s name who wrote the previous commit.
Get back to your previous version after force Pushing
Imagine that you were working in a feature branch. You made some changes, made several commits, and finished your portion of the feature. You then transfer your changes to the primary repository. After that, you mash the commits together using Git rebase-I and then push the changes again using push –force. However, something went wrong, and you’d like to restore your branch to how it was before the rebase command -i. Now, the best feature of Git is that it’s essential not to lose data, which is why that version before the rebase is still accessible.
In this scenario, we’ll use the reflog command, which generates an extensive account of the repository’s history. Git makes a reference log entry for each “update” we do in our local repo. The git reflog command produces these ref-logs, which are saved within our local git repository. It reports every action that has altered branches’ tips, as well as any other reference to your own repositories, such as switching branches and rebasing.
The point of the branch is known as the “head” and is a symbolic reference for the active branch. It’s a symbolic reference because a branch is an identifier for commits.
Final Tip
Your collaborators may become out of sync if you forcefully modify the git history. Instead of changing existing commits, create a new one and push it without force. Force pushes are rarely required. It’s not a good way to practise.
There is one catch to this policy. If you’re working alone on a feature branch, forcing pushes have no effect on anyone else working on that branch. If you want to update the feature branch’s base, you must work on or edit specific commit messages and force-push those changes to the feature branch. Even when your feature branch is joined to the primary branch, the sync state cannot be lost.