Git Push — The Force Push That Deleted a Colleague's Commits

Git push is the most dangerous common Git command. A wrong push can overwrite teammates' commits, rewrite published history, and break CI/CD pipelines. The safety mechanisms (--force-with-lease, branch protection, pre-push hooks) are not enabled by default. Every developer has a force-push horror story. This guide covers safe push practices, the anatomy of a force-push disaster, and how to recover when things go wrong.

Push Basics: Upstream, Tracking, and Safe Force Push

git push origin main pushes local main to remote origin's main. git push -u origin feature pushes and sets upstream tracking — after this, simply git push works. git remote -v shows configured remotes.

git push --force-with-lease is the ONLY safe way to force-push. It checks that the remote branch is at the commit you expect before overwriting. If another developer pushed, --force-with-lease fails with a warning. git config --global push.forceWithLease true makes even --force behave like --force-with-lease.

git push --dry-run shows what would happen without sending. git push --delete origin <branch> deletes a remote branch. git push --tags pushes tags that git push doesn't send by default.

# First push — set upstream
git push -u origin feature/payment-v2

# Subsequent pushes (upstream configured)
git push

# Push specific branch to specific remote
git push origin main

# Safe force push after rebase
git push --force-with-lease origin feature/payment-v2

# Make --force default to --force-with-lease
git config --global push.forceWithLease true

# Dry run — see what would push
git push --dry-run origin main

# Delete remote branch
git push origin --delete feature/old

# Push tags
git push origin --tags

Recovering from a Bad Push

If you force-pushed and lost commits: 1. Anyone who has the commits locally can re-push them. 2. Check their local reflog: git reflog | grep <branch-name>. 3. Recreate the branch from the found SHA: git branch recovered <sha>. 4. Push the recovered branch: git push origin recovered.

If the bad push was a force-push that deleted a remote branch: use GitHub's 'Restore branch' button (Settings → Branches → 'View branches' → find deleted branch → Restore). For GitLab, use the 'Restore branch' button in Repository → Branches.

If you pushed sensitive data (API keys, passwords): assume it's compromised. Rotate the key immediately. Use git filter-branch or git filter-repo to remove the data from history, then force-push with lease. Notify your security team.

# Recover from bad force-push (someone has the commits locally)
git reflog | head -10
git branch recovered-feature a1b2c3d
git push origin recovered-feature

# Fix pushed sensitive data with filter-repo
git filter-repo --path .env --invert-paths
git remote add origin <url>
git push --force-with-lease origin main

# Undo a push that introduced a bad commit
git revert <bad-commit-sha>
git push origin main

# Create an annotated tag for recovery point
git tag -a before-push-$(date +%Y%m%d) -m 'Recovery checkpoint'
git push origin before-push-20260707