I've let master and origin/master get stuck in the sidelines, and am no longer interested in the changes on that branch.
I followed these instructions to get my local master pointing to the right place
Make the current git branch a master branch
git checkout better_branch
git merge --strategy=ours master # keep the content of this branch, but record a merge
git checkout master
git merge better_branch # fast-forward master up to the merge
which worked fine except git status gives
C:\data\localprojects\Beko2011Azure [master]> git status
# On branch master
# Your branch and 'origin/master' have diverged,
# and have 395 and 2 different commits each, respectively.
#
nothing to commit, working directory clean
so how do I now persuade origin/master (github) to reflect my master. Anything orphaned on origin/master can be safely abandoned.
To have origin/master
the same as master
:
git push -f origin master:master
Discussion on the parameters:
-f
is the force flag. Normally, some checks are being applied before it's allowed to push to a branch. The -f
flag turns off all checks.
origin
is the name of the remote where to push (you could have several remotes in one repo)
master:master
means: push my local branch master
to the remote branch master
. The general form is localbranch:remotebranch
. Knowing this is especially handy when you want to delete a branch on the remote: in that case, you push an empty local branch to the remote, thus deleting it: git push origin :remote_branch_to_be_deleted
A more elaborate description of the parameters could be found with man git-push
Opposite direction: If you want to throw away all your changes on master
and want to have it exactly the same as origin/master
:
git checkout master
git reset --hard origin/master