Re: failed to push

[Chris Packham <judge.packham@gmail.com>]

Hi,

On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 1:23 PM, Bruce Korb <bruce.korb@gmail.com> wrote:
> Bruce Korb wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> This message has no meaning at all.  I know it failed to push.
>> I can tell from the comment "[rejected]".  It would be nice
>> to know *WHY* it was rejected so I can fix the problem.
>> How do I determine the cause, please?  Thank you!!  Regards, Bruce
>>
>> $ git push
>> To ssh://bkorb@autogen.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/autogen/autogen
>>  ! [rejected]        master -> master (non-fast forward)
>> error: failed to push some refs to 'ssh://bkorb@autogen.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/autogen/autogen'
>>

This basically means that the push you have attempted is not a simple
fast forward. This basically means that the commit your work is based
on is not present in the remote or that there have been other pushes
to the remote and you need to pull them into your repository to handle
any merging.

>
> A little follow up context:
>
> I used the "git gui citool".  I saw a button to allow an amendment to a
> previous checkin.  That seemed most appropriate, so I did that.  I had
> previously pushed the commit to the sourceforge repository, so my guess
> was that pushing would amend the checkin at sourceforge, too.  Nope.
> Won't let me push.  Won't tell me why, either.  Now what?  Thanks.
> --

OK that kind of sheds some light. I take it you've just switch from a
centralized VCS?

In a DVCS like git all commits happen locally, the only time commits
are sent to the remote repo are when you've pushed so 'git commit
--amend' or 'git gui' with the amend box ticked only makes the change
locally it won't implicitly figure out that a commit has been pushed
out into the ether. One rule of thumb with git (I think it applies to
most DVCSes) is not to amend a commit that has been pushed for this
very reason. Strictly speaking all commits are immutable, when you
amend a commit you actually create a whole new commit and your old one
is marked for garbage collection (if nothing else is based off it).

In terms of recovering from your present situation I'd try the
following (Disclaimer: maybe you shouldn't try these based solely on
my advice. I'm still learning too)

  git pull
  <resolve merge issue, 'git mergetool' is your friend>
  git push

  I think this will basically sort things out but you may need to hand
hold a few things through a merge depending on how different the 2
commits are.

 - or -

  git push -f

  If you're the only one using that repository its probably fine but
this could cause problems for others if they've cloned the repo before
your amended commit.