What would make git delete local files during git pull --rebase?

Question

I am trying to reproduce a problem that resulted from my attempted answer to this question.

In short

A github user tried to do git pull --rebase and that user's local files were deleted. I have tried to recreate this scenario on github but in my case nothing is deleted.

So how can I reproduce the scenario where git pull is destructive?

The details

Part 1:

• A user asked how to synchronize local changes to a newly-created remote repository.
• git push failed because the user did not have remote changes (as expected).
• I suggested to use git pull --rebase, then resolve, then git push again.
• But my suggestion resulted in the user's local files being deleted. (see original question)
• note that the files were tracked (committed locally), so the user was able to restore them.

Part 2:

• I created a repo called https: //github.com/user/myrepo, initialized with README and .gitignore

• locally, I did:

  initialized repo locally

  > mkdir myrepo
  > cd myrepo
  
  > echo AAAAA > fileA.txt
  > echo BBBBB > fileB.txt
  > echo ignoreme > .gitignore
  
  > git init
  

  committed the files locally

  > git add .
  > git commit -m"initial commit"
  

  tried to pull remote changes

  > git remote add origin https://github.com/user/myrepo.git
  > git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master master
  
  > git pull --rebase
  

• the result was (as expected):

  First, rewinding head to replay your work on top of it...
  Applying: initial commit
  Using index info to reconstruct a base tree...
  Falling back to patching base and 3-way merge...
  Auto-merging .gitignore
  CONFLICT (add/add): Merge conflict in .gitignore
  error: Failed to merge in the changes.
  Patch failed at 0001 initial commit
  The copy of the patch that failed is found in: .git/rebase-apply/patch
  
  When you have resolved this problem, run "git rebase --continue".
  If you prefer to skip this patch, run "git rebase --skip" instead.
  To check out the original branch and stop rebasing, run "git rebase --abort".
  

• At this point, if I do ls, my local files are still on my filesystem.

  > ls -a
  .          ..         .git       .gitignore README.md  fileA.txt  fileB.txt
  

---

Update:

Here is a comment from the original user who had the problem.

from user7342807:

... I installed wordpress this morning and did exactly this.

git init
git add .
git commit -m "initial commit"

at this point, I had realized I already created the github page for it, WITH a default readme in it.

So, not knowing this would be an issue, I tried to push as

git remote add origin http://github.com/user/repo.git
git push -u origin master

This is when I received the message:

$ git push -u origin master
To https://github.com/user/project.com
 ! [rejected]        master -> master (fetch first)
error: failed to push some refs to 'https://github.com/user/project.com'
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.

So, instead of force pushing and erasing that README file on github, I did git pull --rebase and git showed me this message

First, rewinding head to replay your work on top of it...

I waited about 5 minutes, before I ctrl+C out of the process, and realized there were about 8-9 files removed from the wordpress site. git status also showed me the removed files.

I was able to recover those files using git reflog which showed me my first commit on HEAD@1 and I recovered my files with git reset --hard "HEAD@{5}"

---

What could have caused the files to be deleted from the other user's local filesystem?

Please note that there is a similar question that asks how to un-delete files when this happens. So this case occurs and people are losing their files.

Answer 1

I can't comment due to low repo, but I installed wordpress this morning and did exactly this.

git init
git add .
git commit -m "initial commit"

at this point, I had realized I already created the github page for it, WITH a default readme in it.

So, not knowing this would be an issue, I tried to push as

git remote add origin http://github.com/user/repo.git
git push -u origin master

This is when I received the message:

$ git push -u origin master
To https://github.com/user/project.com
 ! [rejected]        master -> master (fetch first)
error: failed to push some refs to 'https://github.com/user/project.com'
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.

So, instead of force pushing and erasing that README file on github, I did git pull --rebase and git showed me this message

First, rewinding head to replay your work on top of it...

I waited about 5 minutes, before I ctrl+C out of the process, and realized there were about 8-9 files removed from the wordpress site. git status also showed me the removed files.

I was able to recover those files using git reflog which showed me my first commit on HEAD@1 and I recovered my files with git reset --hard "HEAD@{5}"