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

I'm working on a team with a few developers using git on BitBucket. We are all working on a dev branch, 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 about 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. I guess I was wrong. Thanks again

Update: I should add that I have looked for a few hours on Google and StackOverflow, and followed different instructions, but I still can't push to the dev branch.

You can override any checks that git does by using "force push". Use this command in terminal

> git push -f origin master

However, you will potentially ignore the existing work that is in remote - you are effectively rewriting the remote's history to be exactly like your local copy.

It happens when we are trying to push to remote repository but has created a new file on remote which has not been pulled yet, let say Readme. In that case as the error says

> git rejects the update

as we have not taken updated remote in our local environment. So Take pull first from remote

git pull

It will update your local repository and add a new Readme file. Then Push updated changes to remote

git push origin master

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

git pull <remote> 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, so 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 want to check what is going on in remote/master.

This usually happens when the repo contains some items that are not there locally. So in order to push our changes, in this case we need to integrate the remote changes and then push.

So create a pull from remote

git pull origin master

Then push changes to that remote

git push origin master

Force to push

git push -f origin master

I fixed it, I'm not exactly sure what I did. I tried simply pushing and pulling using:

git pull <remote> dev instead of git pull <remote> master:dev

Hope this helps out someone if they are having the same issue.

You can try this: git pull origin master --rebase

This is how I solved this issue:

1. git pull origin master
2. git push origin master

This usually happens when your remote branch is not updated. And after this if you get an error like "Please enter a commit message" Refer to this ( For me xiaohu Wang answer worked :) )

You need to input:

$ git pull
$ git fetch 
$ git merge

If you use a git push origin master --force, you will have a big problem.

> git pull --rebase origin master > > git push origin master

---

> git push -f origin master

Warning git push -f origin master

• forcefully pushes on existing repository and also delete previous repositories so if you don`t need previous versions than this might be helpful

Well actually github is much simpler than we think and absolutely it happens whenever we try to push even after we explicitly inserted some files in our git repository so, in order to fix the issue simply try..

: git pull

and then..

: git push

Note: if you accidently stuck in vim editor after pulling your repository than don't worry just close vim editor and try push :)

I have done below steps. finally it's working fine.

Steps

1. git init

2. git status (for checking status)

3. git add . (add all the change file (.))

4. git commit -m "<pass your comment>"

5. git remote add origin "<pass your project clone url>"

6. git pull --allow-unrelated-histories "<pass your project clone url>" master

7. git push -u "<pass your project clone url>" master

I had this error and it was because there was an update on the server but SourceTree was not showing any updates available (possibly because I was offline when it last checked). So I did a refresh in source tree and now it shows 2 items to push instead of 1 item.

So be sure to press refresh or pull if you get this error and then try again.

you can use

git pull --rebase <your_reponame> <your_branch>

this will help incase you have some changes not yet registered on your local repo. especially README.md

The best option for me and it works and simple

git pull --rebase

then

git push

best of luck

I had the same problem. It happened that I have created .Readme file on the repository without pulling it first.

You may want to delete .Readme file or pull it before pushing.

The error possibly comes because of the different structure of the code that you are committing and that present on GitHub. You may refer to: How to deal with "refusing to merge unrelated histories" error:

$ git pull --allow-unrelated-histories
$ git push -f origin master

I had the same problem. Make sure that you are on the right heroku account. It appears when I tried to push the changes to the wrong heroku account

If you have initialized a new github repo with ReadMe file and also receiving a fatal error like this:

> fatal: refusing to merge unrelated histories

then you probably want to give a try to the command below:

git pull origin master --allow-unrelated-histories

Now you can try pushing your project to your new repository:

git push origin [branch]

Note: If you have initialized repository in Github and also committed locally, then you need to use the suggested command above, the first command "git pull origin...". Otherwise you can simply type the following command:

git pull origin [branch]

Hope it was helpful.