Git: Discard all changes on remote branch and push local changes without force push

Question

The case is similar to : Git: Discard all changes on a diverged local branch.

Differences:

• I want to discard changes which have been pushed to remote repository,
• git push origin foo:foo --force is rejected (origin doesn't allow force pushing).

Given commit graph:

A--B--C--O1--O2--O3 (foo)
       \
         L1--L2--L3 (origin/foo)

I want to achieve this if possible:

A--B--C--O1--O2--O3 (foo origin/foo)

If above is impossible then following is ok for me:

A--B--C--O1--O2--O3--M1 (foo)
       \            /
         L1--L2--L3 (origin/foo)

but I want git diff M1..03 be empty i.e. discard all changes introduced in origin/foo. And -s ours strategy doesn't help because this only works for conflicts and non-conflicting changes will still be added to M1.

How can I do this?

SOLUTION (by Mohan Kumar P)

Delete remote branch and push. git should create remote branch automatically if it's tracked (check git branch -vv).

To achieve this:

A--B--C--O1--O2--O3 (foo origin/foo)
       \
         L1--L2--L3

type:

git push origin --delete foo
git checkout foo  # Git ≥ 1.6.6.
git push origin foo

Answer 1

The -s ours strategy does work. It's the -X ours "strategy argument" that does not work (for the reason you give).

I think calling these both ours, and then furthermore calling one a "strategy" and the other a "strategy argument" was at best poor planning, as it's confusing, to say the least. (It arose because the -X values are arguments that are passed on to the driver selected by the -s argument—but this explanation just makes it even worse: "The -s argument is the strategy and the -X arguments are the arguments to the strategy from the first argument." "What, so they're argument arguments!? ... Wait, what are we arguing about again?")

Nonetheless, the -s ours strategy really does precisely what you're asking for: it pretends to merge, without even looking at the other branch. Hence, if you are on branch foo whose upstream is origin/foo and you have the graph you have drawn as the starting position, then:

git merge -s ours origin/foo

(perhaps with an explicit -m message as well, or you can use the editor when it runs to explain the merge) will give you the final graph you drew.