How to resolve You are trying to rewrite {N} public commits error?

[andresoto-x]

Im running into the following issue when I run git restack. I have a chain of branches and was modifying one of the intermediate branches.

git restack
You are trying to rewrite 7 public commits, such as: a0e262d GraphQL CIM API to support types from the Domain package. (#1832)
It is generally not advised to rewrite public commits, because your
collaborators will have difficulty merging your changes.
Retry with -f/--force-rewrite to proceed anyways.

[andresoto-x]

Steps to reproduce.

$ git sl 
◇ 72381e6 1h (main)
$ echo test > test
$ git add . 
$ git commit --amend --no-edit

$ git sl
◇ abc1234 6m (main) main description

$ git checkout -b foo
$ echo foo > foo
$ git add . 
$ git commit --m "foo"

$ git sl
◇ abc1234 6m (main) main description
┃
◯ 3ceab8a 4m (foo) foo

$ git checkout -b foo2
$ echo foo2 > foo2
$ git add .
$ git commit -m "foo2"
$ git sl

◇ abc1234 6m (main) main description
┃
◯ 3ceab8a 4m (foo) test
┃
● a49bbd9 25s (ᐅ foo2) foo2

$ git co main
$ git pull
$ git sl
⋮
◇ 987654 6m commit before main
┣━┓
⋮ ✕ abc1234 6m (rewritten as 123456) main description
⋮ ┃
⋮ ◯ 3ceab8a 4m (foo) test
⋮ ┃
⋮ ◯ a49bbd9 25s (ᐅ foo2) foo2
⋮
◆ 123456 4s (ᐅ main) main description

$ git restack
You are trying to rewrite 1 public commit, such as: 123456 main description
It is generally not advised to rewrite public commits, because your
collaborators will have difficulty merging your changes.

[arxanas]

Something seems to be wrong with your git pull unrelated to git-branchless. As demonstrated in your last smartlog, the old version of main pointed to abc1234, but the new version of main points to 123456. Normally, after a git pull, the old main commit will be an ancestor of the new main commit. Since in your case it isn't, if you were to immediately git push, then it should be rejected because the new main is not a descendant of the old main. If you were to force-push, then you would be rewriting public history, which is what git-branchless is warning about.

If this is okay in your case, you can of course run git restack with the -f/--force-rewrite flag to ignore the warning and rebase your branches on top of the new main, but the principled fix is to resolve whatever your git pull is doing so that the resulting main is a descendant of its previous value.

You can also try git restack 'stack()' to see if the warning disappears. This became the new default in a recent version of git-branchless (and I'm not sure if it was released in a public release yet).

[claytonrcarter]

@andresoto-x I don't understand something about your example. Can you clarify? In your example, there are 4 commits related to main:

• 987654 commit before main
• 72381e6 (no description) ← this is main but also detached HEAD when you start your example
• abc1234 main description ← this is the new main and still a detached HEAD commit after you run git commit --amend --no-edit (3rd command)
• 123456 main description ← this is main (which is checked out) after you run git pull

So, in your example, has new work been added to the remote main? Or is your local main "up to date" when you start your example? If it's up to date, I'm surprised that that git pull succeeded since it would seem that main would have divergent states locally vs remote (though I'm not very familiar w/ working on divergent branches like that).

Also, can you clarify what you would expect to happen?