How do I force a subtree push to overwrite remote changes?

git yeoman git-subtree
ele picture ele · Oct 16, 2015 · Viewed 12.3k times · Source

We use a subtree deployment a lá this Gist to deploy a subdirectory of our Yeoman project. In our case, the branch is called production, not gh-pages.

This worked perfectly until yesterday when the Git server rejected the command git subtree push --prefix dist origin production, saying

 ! [rejected]        9fe1683aa574eae33ee6754aad702488e0bd37df -> production (non-fast-forward)
error: failed to push some refs to '[email protected]:web-and-new-media/graduation2015.git'
hint: Updates were rejected because a pushed branch tip is behind its remote
hint: counterpart.

If I switch to the production branch locally (which is clean), git pull returns Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/production'. even if I use the --rebase option.

I can see the contents of the production branch on the server through our web UI and there's nothing there that shouldn't be, just the compiled output of our dist directory like I'd expect.

To that end, it seems like I should safely be able to force an overwrite of these files, but how? git subtree push doesn't have a --force option.

Answer

ele picture ele · Oct 16, 2015

The trick was to chain the subtree split into a forced push:

git push origin `git subtree split --prefix dist master`:production --force

I got this from the Addendum of http://clontz.org/blog/2014/05/08/git-subtree-push-for-deployment/, who actually references this answer on Stack Overflow. I had skimmed this one earlier but Steve Clontz's post made it click for me.

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