How do I push individual commits?

[lcolen]

I've been using github desktop fairly successfully for about a year and a half. For the most part, it just works.

A few days ago, I noticed that a bunch of my recent commits have not been pushed to github. Something that I've found online seems to think that it is because I'm trying to push too much at one time and one of the links in the chain is timing out and dropping the connection.

When I tried to find out how to get github desktop to push the commits individually, I found out that this is impossible, it will either do everything, or nothing at all. It suggested using git from the command line.

When I tried to use git from the command line it told me that it no longer accepts password verification and that I have to do
gh auth login

When I do a gh auth login it tells me that I'm already logged in.

I'm pretty well stuck here, and can't think of much to do other than cloning everything off of github, starting a new repository, checking in the new files in small batches and just abandoning the current repo, or maybe just branch. |

There really must be a better way to go about this. I can't believe that it both won't let me check things in all together, nor will it let me check things in in smaller batches.

[williammartin]

Hey @lcolen that sounds super frustrating! I've passed on your feedback to the desktop team but in the meantime maybe I can help you with the CLI.

It sounds like you have a git remote set up that expects password authentication such that if you ran git remote -v you would see your username before the @ symbol e.g:

➜  git remote -v
origin  https://williammartin@github.com/cli/cli.git (fetch)
origin  https://williammartin@github.com/cli/cli.git (push)

Then when you try to git push from the command line, you received an error like:

Password for 'https://williammartin@github.com':
remote: Support for password authentication was removed on August 13, 2021.
remote: Please see https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/getting-started-with-git/about-remote-repositories#cloning-with-https-urls for information on currently recommended modes of authentication.
fatal: Authentication failed for 'https://github.com/cli/cli.git/'

Now, it should be the case that when you log in using gh auth login you have the option to setup the git credential manager to use the oauth token that is provided when you log in. However, since it's not clear when or how you logged in, the first thing I'd suggest is running:

gh auth setup-git

Which should configure the credential manager manually. After this succeeds which should look something like:

➜  gh auth setup-git
[git config --global --replace-all credential.https://github.com.helper ]
[git config --global --add credential.https://github.com.helper !/opt/homebrew/bin/gh auth git-credential]
[git config --global --replace-all credential.https://gist.github.com.helper ]
[git config --global --add credential.https://gist.github.com.helper !/opt/homebrew/bin/gh auth git-credential

Then you can try to git push again.

If that doesn't work we'll do some more digging!

[lcolen]

Thanks, Your reply gave me enough clues to eventually find: https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/keeping-your-account-and-data-secure/managing-your-personal-access-tokens which seems to have gotten me over this particular hump. I was pretty sure that I had already set up a Personal Access Token, but I guess it expired. I *think* that I'm checking in one of the commits right now. I seem to have tried to do a commit everything on the command line and it failed for the same reasons. Now when I try to push commits I'm getting error: failed to push some refs to 'https://github.com/lcolen/cm410_pid_prototype.git' hint: Updates were rejected because the tip of your current branch is behind hint: its remote counterpart. Integrate the remote changes (e.g. hint: 'git pull ...') before pushing again. hint: See the 'Note about fast-forwards' in 'git push --help' for details. unfortunately gitlog seems to just tell me what commits that I've tried to make, and not what their actual status is.

…

On Thu, 2023-11-09 at 00:44 -0800, William Martin wrote: Hey @lcolen that sounds super frustrating! I've passed on your feedback to the desktop team but in the meantime maybe I can help you with the CLI. It sounds like you have a git remote set up that expects passwordw authentication such that if you ran git remote -v you would see your username before the @ symbol e.g: ➜ git remote -v origin ***@***.***/cli/cli.git (fetch) origin ***@***.***/cli/cli.git (push) Then when you try to git push from the command line, you received an error like: Password for ***@***.***': remote: Support for password authentication was removed on August 13, 2021. remote: Please see https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/getting-started-with-git/about-remote-repositories#cloning-with-https-urls for information on currently recommended modes of authentication. fatal: Authentication failed for 'https://github.com/cli/cli.git/' Now, it should be the case that when you log in using gh auth login you have the option to setup the git credential manager to use the oauth token that is provided when you log in. However, since it's not clear when or how you logged in, the first thing I'd suggest is running: gh auth setup-git Which should configure the credential manager manually. After this succeeds which should look something like: ➜ gh auth setup-git [git config --global --replace-all credential.https://github.com.helper ] [git config --global --add credential.https://github.com.helper !/opt/homebrew/bin/gh auth git-credential] [git config --global --replace-all credential.https://gist.github.com.helper ] [git config --global --add credential.https://gist.github.com.helper !/opt/homebrew/bin/gh auth git-credential Then you can try to git push again. If that doesn't work we'll do some more digging! — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[lcolen]

I realize that this is tantamount to aiming a very large gun at my own foot but...

I expect that there is a directory on my computer that has a list of all of the unpushed commits. Could I do something along the lines of
mv commitdir commitdir.ignore
mkdir commitdir
And make my system basically forget all of those commits, then just do a fresh snapshot of the system as it is today?

I realize that I'll lose all of the incremental checkpoints along the way, but at least I'd be able to get back to writing software.

My experience is that the desktop is very user friendly and requires very little knowledge of the inner workings, until something goes wrong, at which point you need a tremendous amount of intimate knowledge of all of the inner workings of the system.

[lcolen]

The git rebase solution seems to be very close what I need, but I'd like to just prune a couple branches of the file tree that have many many files in them.

[williammartin]

I expect that there is a directory on my computer that has a list of all of the unpushed commits. Could I do something along the lines of

In your git repo there is a .git directory but the contents aren't really something to mess around with. However, if you are fine with totally destroying your git history you can do one of the following (I suggest taking a copy of your current repo directory first just to be safe!):

git checkout --orphan no-history-branch # checks out a new branch with no commit history
git add -A # add all the files in your repo to the staging
git commit -am "commit message" # commit all those false
git branch -D master # delete the local master branch
git branch -m master # rename your new no-history-branch to master
git push -f origin master # push the new branch with force to overwrite everything in the remote

Alternatively, you could throw away the entire .git directory and create a new one like so:

rm -rf .git # delete git directory
git init # create a new git repo locally
git remote add origin https://github.com/lcolen/cm410_pid_prototype.git # add the github remote
git add -A # add all the files in your repo to the staging
git commit -am "commit message" # commit all those false
git push -f origin master # push the new branch with force to overwrite everything in the remote

In both cases you will end up with just one commit on your master branch remotely. The first gives you some kind of recoverable state but you'll need some deeper git-fu to recover if you make a mistake. In either case, taking a copy of the original directory would be sensible.

[lcolen]

Thanks, for helping me with my commitment issues. I seem to have things sorted out now without losing any data.
I ran into an issue because just to be save I did a
mv .git dotgit
rather than
rm -rf .git
or
mv .git ../dotgit
without realizing just how big dotgit was.

[williammartin]

Well indeed, .git contains the entire history of your project! When you git checkout some commit, git looks in there to change the state of your working directory.

[lcolen]

Ah, I see, that wiped out my entire history for everything. I would have been better off just starting a whole new branch.

Oh well, at least I can resume checking things in.

[lcolen]

That's interesting. I had the mistaken understanding that the history was stored on github. For some reason, I had thought that the local .git was just the local history that hadn't been pushed back to the server. But, since I'm the paranoid sort that kept a copy of my original .git file, what if I were to want to have a branch that had all of my previous history, and I didn't care if I had the changes I wasn't able to check in. How would I go about reconstructing what I had a few weeks ago, or for that matter yesterday, from my backed up .git directory?

…

-----Original message----- From: William Martin ***@***.***> Sent: Thursday, November 9 2023, 10:34 pm To: cli/cli ***@***.***> Cc: Larry Colen ***@***.***>; Mention ***@***.***> Subject: Re: [cli/cli] How do I push individual commits? (Discussion #8312) Well indeed, .git contains the entire history of your project! When you git checkout some commit, git looks in there to change the state of your working directory. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#8312 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AYLC5DXYDNE6RXZF2LSOO6LYDXDF3AVCNFSM6AAAAAA7DVLXM6VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43SRDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHM3TKMZQGEYDC>. You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Message ID: ***@***.***>

[williammartin]

That's interesting. I had the mistaken understanding that the history was stored on github. For some reason, I had thought that the local .git was just the local history that hadn't been pushed back to the server.

This is what differentiates git from centralised source control. The idea being that anyone who cloned it has a fully working copy of the repo. There's not really anything special about the git repository in the server, it's kind of just another clone that pulls in your changes. In the same way, you could pull changes to your repo from someone else's clone, if they had a server in front of it. Keep in mind your local copy also contains anything that hasn't been pushed to the server yet.

But, since I'm the paranoid sort that kept a copy of my original .git file

Always a good idea before making dangerous changes.

what if I were to want to have a branch that had all of my previous history, and I didn't care if I had the changes I wasn't able to check in

If you want all your previous history you would want to replace your current .git dir with your backup. Then you would want to find the commit before you introduced the large files on your master branch, perhaps using git log --diff-filter=A -- <PATH TO LARGE FILE> which should show you the commit that added the file.

Then you can do a git reset --hard <sha>^ which will move your master branch to the commit before you introduced the file (^ means 1 previous commit) followed by git push --force origin master to force your local state to the remote.