Updates were rejected because the remote contains work that you do not have locally

Question

I'm working on a team with a few developers using git on BitBucket. We are all working on a devbranch, not pushing to master until a release.

One of the developers committed incorrect code that overwrote my own by accident, and now I am trying to push the correct code back to the repo. I have been reading on this error for a few days now, I can't push to the repo anymore because I am getting the following error:

! [rejected]        master -> dev (fetch first)

error: failed to push some refs to 'https://[email protected]/repo_user/repo_name.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.

I follow the instructions and pull, but then I receive a merge conflict. After entering a message for the merge conflict, my local code is now the incorrect code that the other developer uploaded by accident (as expected from the pull). So I replace the incorrect code with the backup I copied before committing, and when I try to push again, I get the same error.

It is really frustrating, I really want to help out my team and contribute, but I can't because of this error. Does anyone know how to solve this issue? I would very much appreciate any help.

These are the commands I run in order to commit if it helps anyone out:

git pull remotename master:dev

git add --all

git commit -m "some message"

git pull remotename master:dev

git push remotename master:dev

I would have thought that if I kept this order, I would not receive merge conflicts. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

git pull master:dev will fetch the remote/master branch and merge it into your local branch.

git pull dev will fetch the remote/dev branch, and merge it into your current branch.

I think you said the conflicting commit is on remote/dev, that is the branch you probably intended to fetch and merge.

In that case, you weren't actually merging the conflict into your local branch, which is sort of weird since you said you saw the incorrect code in your working copy.

You might wish to examine what's happening in remote/master.