Collaboration on master Branch
When many colleagues work with the master branch directly, conflicts can arise when pushing. TL;DR: Always rebase instead of merge! This creates a clean, linear commit history.
If you have made some changes directly on the master branch and want to push them, the push will either be fast-forwarded or git will tell you that other changes have been made to master:
$ git push
To /home/umcdev/projects/git-demo/pull-merge-vs-rebase.git
! [rejected] master -> master (fetch first)
error: failed to push some refs to '/home/umcdev/projects/git-demo/pull-merge-vs-rebase.git'
hint: Updates were rejected because the remote contains work that you do
hint: not have locally. This is usually caused by another repository pushing
hint: to the same ref. You may want to first integrate the remote changes
hint: (e.g., 'git pull ...') before pushing again.
hint: See the 'Note about fast-forwards' in 'git push --help' for details.
You will have to manually resolve this case and there are two choices:
-
merge origin/master into your master and push
$ git lol * e82e9a2 (HEAD -> master) adds awesome feature from bob | * 1507845 (origin/master, origin/HEAD) adds awesome feature from alice |/ * e6a4787 previous commit * 60019be ... $ git pull --no-edit Already up-to-date! Merge made by the 'recursive' strategy. $ git lol * abfeda2 (HEAD -> master) Merge branch 'master' of /home/umcdev/projects/git-demo/pull-merge-vs-rebase |\ | * 1507845 (origin/master, origin/HEAD) adds awesome feature from alice * | e82e9a2 adds awesome feature from bob |/ * e6a4787 previous commit * 60019be ...Avoid this, because non-linear history is less readable!
-
rebase your master on origin/master and push
$ git lol * e82e9a2 (HEAD -> master) adds awesome feature from bob | * 1507845 (origin/master, origin/HEAD) adds awesome feature from alice |/ * e6a4787 previous commit * 60019be ... $ git pull --rebase First, rewinding head to replay your work on top of it... Applying: adds awesome feature from bob $ git lol * 519da48 (HEAD -> master) adds awesome feature from bob * 1507845 (origin/master, origin/HEAD) adds awesome feature from alice * e6a4787 previous commit * 60019be ...Much cleaner, this is the way to go!
Note: You can even make rebase’ing while pulling a default:
git config [--global] pull.rebase preserve