Git/Resolving Push Conflicts

Sometimes, when you try and push your commits with git push, you'll see a message like this:

$ git push
To https://github.com/siluria/transport.git
Merge branch 'master' of https://github.com/siluria/transport
 ! [rejected]        master -> master (fetch first)
error: failed to push some refs to 'https://github.com/siluria/transport.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 merge the remote changes (e.g.,
hint: 'git pull') before pushing again.
hint: See the 'Note about fast-forwards' in 'git push --help' for details.

Then, if you try and pull the latest changes with git pull, you might see a message like this:

$ git pull
remote: Counting objects: 8, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (8/8), done.
remote: Total 8 (delta 0), reused 2 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (8/8), done.
From https://github.com/siluria/transport
   153782f..10e0b68  master     -> origin/master
Auto-merging twodomain/SubdomainCatalyst.py
Auto-merging twodomain/Interface.py
Auto-merging twodomain/Driver.py
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in twodomain/Driver.py
Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.

In this case, you can edit the file with the conflict, in this case, Driver.py. You'll see some lines like this:

<<<<<<< HEAD
old code
=======
new code
>>>>>>> iss53

Edit this file to merge the code however you decide. Once you do that, you'll run git add on the code with the file, which tells git you have resolved the conflict.

$ git add Driver.py

Then - this is key - you run git commit with NO OTHER ARGUMENTS.

If you try and add arguments, i.e., specifying which file to commit, or adding a commit message, you'll see an error like this:

$ git commit Driver.py -m 'resolving conflict.'
fatal: cannot do a partial commit during a merge.

Just run git commit with no arguments:

$ git commit
[master d1d98ed] Merge branch 'master' of https://github.com/siluria/transport

Now you should be able to run git push with no problems:

$ git push
Counting objects: 23, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (12/12), done.
Writing objects: 100% (12/12), 1.48 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 12 (delta 10), reused 0 (delta 0)
To https://github.com/siluria/transport.git
   10e0b68..d1d98ed  master -> master