Updates were rejected because the tip of your current branch is behind its remote counterpart

Question

Our workflow is such. We have a branch called dev which I can reach at origin/dev. When we do changes, we create a branch off dev:

git checkout -b FixForBug origin/dev 

Now I have a branch called FixForBug which is tracking (I think that's the right word) origin/dev. Thus, if I do a git pull it'll bring in new changes from origin/dev which is great. Now, when I'm finished with my fix, I push to a remote branch called the same thing.

First I pull down any changes from origin/dev and do a rebase:

git pull --rebase 

Then I push the changes to a remote branch of the same name:

git push origin FixForBug 

Now, there's a branch on the remote server and I can create a pull request for that change to be approved and merged back in to the dev branch. I don't ever push anything to origin/dev myself. I'm guessing this is as pretty common workflow.

The first time I do a git push, it works fine and creates the remote branch. However, if I push a second time (let's say during code-review, someone points out a problem), I get the following error:

error: failed to push some refs to 'https://github.mydomain.info/Product/product.git'
hint: Updates were rejected because the tip of your current branch is behind its remote counterpart. Integrate the remote changes (e.g. hint: 'git pull ...') before pushing again.
See the 'Note about fast-forwards' in 'git push --help' for details.

However, if I do a git status it says I'm ahead of origin/dev by 1 commit (which makes sense) and if I follow the hint and run git pull, it says everything is up to date. I think this is because I'm pushing to a different branch than my upstream branch. I can fix this issue by running:

git push -f origin FixForBug

In that case, it'll push the changes to the remote branch, saying (forced update) and everything appears to be good on the remote branch.

My Questions:

Why is -f required in this scenario? Usually when you're forcing something, it's because you were doing something wrong or at least against standard practice. Am I ok doing this, or will it mess up something in the remote branch or create a hassle for whoever has to eventually merge my stuff into dev?

Answer 1

The -f is actually required because of the rebase. Whenever you do a rebase you would need to do a force push because the remote branch cannot be fast-forwarded to your commit. You'd always want to make sure that you do a pull before pushing, but if you don't like to force push to master or dev for that matter, you can create a new branch to push to and then merge or make a PR.