Git: --force-with-lease and multiple pushurls

Question

I have a git repo with remote origin mirrored on 3 hosts.

$ git remote -v
origin  [email protected]:username/repo.git (fetch)
origin  [email protected]:username/repo.git (push)
origin  [email protected]:username/repo.git (push)
origin  [email protected]:username/repo.git (push)

Everything, everywhere is at commit A.

$ git rev-parse HEAD
A

$ cat .git/refs/remotes/origin/master
A

I author commit B and push it. Now everyone's at commit B.

$ git push origin master
To github.com:username/repo.git
   A...B             master -> master
To gitlab.com:username/repo.git
   A...B             master -> master
To bitbucket.org:username/repo.git
   A...B             master -> master

$ git rev-parse HEAD
B

$ cat .git/refs/remotes/origin/master
B

Now I notice a mistake in that last commit, so I fix it and ammend the commit. This puts me out of sync with the remote(s).

$ git rev-parse HEAD
C

$ cat .git/refs/remotes/origin/master
B

I like to avoid blindly --force pushing, so I use --force-with-lease, but this fails in an interesting way.

$ git push --force-with-lease origin master
To github.com:username/repo.git
 + B...C             master -> master (forced update)
To gitlab.com:username/repo.git
 ! [rejected]        master -> master (stale info)
To bitbucket.org:username/repo.git
 ! [rejected]        master -> master (stale info)

The problem is, --force-with-lease will only consider the push safe if the remote ref is at the same commit as last time I communicated with it, and my local records the sha1 of that commit in .git/refs/remotes/origin/master. As soon as the first mirror (GitHub) is updated, git updates my local's remote ref to commit C, causing the push attempts to GitLab and Bitbucket to fail, since we're now expecting them to be at commit C.

I want to figure this out, so first I force the GitHub mirror back to commit B.

$ git push origin +B:refs/heads/master
To github.com:username/repo.git
 + C...B             B -> master (forced update)
Everything up-to-date
Everything up-to-date

Now I need to be more specific about which commit I expect the remotes to be at for the push. The documentation says you can specify exactly which ref to update, and what commit you expect it to currently be at with --force-with-lease=<refname>:<expect>, so I try that.

$ git push --force-with-lease=origin/master:B origin master
To github.com:username/repo.git
 ! [rejected]        master -> master (non-fast-forward)
To gitlab.com:username/repo.git
 ! [rejected]        master -> master (non-fast-forward)
To bitbucket.org:username/repo.git
 ! [rejected]        master -> master (non-fast-forward)

Clearly I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I've got the <refname> wrong? I feel I'm so close. What am I missing?

Answer 1

Very interesting question! I've tried it out and successfully reproduced what you are describing with Git 2.11.0 in these test repos:

• https://github.com/hkdobrev/git-test
• https://github.com/hkdobrev/git-test2

I was able to successfully push with --force-with-lease to both remote URLs by using the following form:

git push --force-with-lease origin +master

Notice the + sign before the branch name. Here is the output:

$ git push --force-with-lease origin +master
Counting objects: 2, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (2/2), 232 bytes | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 2 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
To github.com:hkdobrev/git-test.git
 + 099b95f...08c7548 master -> master (forced update)
Counting objects: 2, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (2/2), 232 bytes | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 2 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
To github.com:hkdobrev/git-test2.git
 + 099b95f...08c7548 master -> master (forced update)

From the git-push (1) man page:

Note that --force applies to all the refs that are pushed, hence using it with push.default set to matching or with multiple push destinations configured with remote.*.push may overwrite refs other than the current branch (including local refs that are strictly behind their remote counterpart). To force a push to only one branch, use a + in front of the refspec to push (e.g git push origin +master to force a push to the master branch). See the <refspec>... section above for details.