git · Git
The message
! [rejected] main -> main (non-fast-forward)
What it means
Your branch is not a descendant of the remote branch, so pushing as is would drop commits that exist on the server. It happens when you rewrote already-pushed commits with rebase, amend or reset. If the rewrite was deliberate and the branch is yours alone, use git push --force-with-lease: it refuses when the remote moved since your last fetch, so unlike plain --force it cannot silently erase a colleague's push that landed in between. If the rewrite was not deliberate, the answer is pull --rebase, not force.
The fix
git push --force-with-lease- Printed by
- git
- Git
- 29
Almost every git error is a refusal that means "doing that from this state would lose something"; fatal: means git stopped without changing anything, and the hint: lines under the first line usually carry the actual remedy.
Reading an error message
- Read from the first line down. The lower you go the more it is about the tool’s internals; the cause is usually at the top.
- If there is a file and a line number, start there — not the top stack frame, but the topmost line that names a file you wrote.
- Search the message verbatim, but strip your own paths and variable names first; those are what stop the search from matching.
- The same condition is worded differently across tool versions. If results look wrong, add the version number to the query.
- Before pasting a fix, check what it throws away. Some of these cannot be undone.
Common questions
Q. What does “! [rejected] main -> main (non-fast-forward)” mean?
Your branch is not a descendant of the remote branch, so pushing as is would drop commits that exist on the server. It happens when you rewrote already-pushed commits with rebase, amend or reset. If the rewrite was deliberate and the branch is yours alone, use git push --force-with-lease: it refuses when the remote moved since your last fetch, so unlike plain --force it cannot silently erase a colleague's push that landed in between. If the rewrite was not deliberate, the answer is pull --rebase, not force.
Q. How do I fix it?
git push --force-with-lease — before running it, check the explanation above for what this command discards.
Q. Which tool prints this?
git. It sits under Git, and the message runs to 6 words.