Git: push rejected non-fast forward

When trying to do a push to a repo, you might encounter the following error:

$ git push github master
To git@gitproxy:rip747/cfwheels.git
! [rejected]        master -> master (non-fast forward)
error: failed to push some refs to ‘git@gitproxy:rip747/cfwheels.git’

Don’t panic, this is extremely easy to fix. All you have to do is issue a pull and your branch will be fast-forward:

$ git pull github master
From git@gitproxy:rip747/cfwheels
* branch            master     -> FETCH_HEAD
Already uptodate!
Merge made by recursive.

Then retry your push and everything should be fine:

$ git push github master
Counting objects: 44, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (32/32), done.
Writing objects: 100% (32/32), 6.30 KiB, done.
Total 32 (delta 23), reused 0 (delta 0)
To git@gitproxy:rip747/cfwheels.git
1717535..1406e8c  master -> master

UPDATE: I ran into another instance of this that the solution above didn’t solve and have provided a solution below.

Another situation where you might run into this, is if you’re tracking a branch that is not the same name as the remote. For instance, say you have a remote branch called otherrepo/master and you already have a local master branch, so you checkout the otherrepo/master branch as othermaster locally. Now even though you do a pull, when you go to push, you will get the rejected error.

To get around this, you will have to specify the local branch in the push command using a colon (:) like so:

git push otherrepo othermaster:master