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How to get somebody fired using Git

Mauro Accorinti on April 02, 2024

This is Billy. He is a trainee developer working for an important company. Unfortunately for the company, today Billy has woken up and...
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Poorshad Shaddel

Poor Trent should have been familiar with git reflog :) Nice article!

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Mauro Accorinti

Thank you so much!

Git reflog would have definetely saved the day here

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Ethan Willingham

This article is genius, sucked me in with entertainment and actually got me to read something and become informed, thankyou!

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Mauro Accorinti

Let's goooo, glad it helped and you enjoyed it!

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Kenneth Quiggins

Adding lessons in with a sense of humor, I love it. 😎

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Mauro Accorinti

Thanks Kenneth! The world needs fun git tutorials hahaha

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Kenneth Quiggins

It most definitely does my friend 🙏

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Tyler Hawkins

That was great, thanks for the laugh! Well written.

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Mauro Accorinti

Thanks for the kind comment!

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Wiktor Wandachowicz

That's why everybody and their dog should not use plain --force because it may be destructive.

Instead always use git push --force-with-lease (!)

Found this little gem while watching "So You Think You Know Git - FOSDEM 2024" on YouTube, around 17:42. There is even part 2 of this video 😊

See:

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Sin No Aria (AI Sin)

Out of curiosity, is there a reason why they aren't flipped? Like why it wasn't designed with force being force with lease by default and the current force being a force without lease command?

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Mauro Accorinti

So after a few google searches, I honestly couldn't find the answer! So I just went into the Git repository and went down to a tag made 20 years ago.

Here's the git push documentation from that moment:
github.com/git/git/blob/v0.99/Docu...

My guess is git push was made first and then somewhere down the line the option to push with lease was added later.

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Mauro Accorinti

Thank you for mentioning it! The resources you posted are also excellent so it adds a lot.

Thanks to you and another commenter, I decided to at least mention it in the article.

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Jan Küster

If a previous commit is stable and you messed up things a lot (not necessary due to wrong git usage) then git reset --hard <commit hash> may be exactly what you need

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Mauro Accorinti

Oh absolutely! There's a use case and everything for git reset. Especially when you know what you're doing. Git is super powerful for that reason.

Git push - -force also has its uses. It's necessary for doing a clean rebase or when you want to cleanly amend a commit.

It's all about responsible use.

This article was about irresponsible use 😅

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Jan Küster

The article is great! Just wanted to leave this one to make people curious. I also love converting on these kind of articles, finding gems I never heard/read before 👍

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spO0q 🐒🎃 • Edited

Congrats for this article. Pretty fun. In real conditions, sign your commits + protect main branches against forced push.

Pull requests can also mitigate those issues (which is mentioned in the post)

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Michael Casile

Creative way to provide some serious DON'Ts and why

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Mauro Accorinti

Thank you for the kindness!

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João Paulo Martins Silva

The best way to learn, doing wrong things.

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Mauro Accorinti

There's no better way to learn 😄

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Thomas Segura • Edited

Great article.
For reference, when a .env file is pushed to public GitHub, it is 54% likely to expose a secret (and it happens a lot..)
source: The State of Secrets Sprawl 2024

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Mauro Accorinti

Awesome stat! Really liked the phrase:
“Compromised credentials are a gift that keeps on giving
(your stuff away)”

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schollii

Fun article, if a little evil. One clarification: git reset alters the commit history in your local repository only. If it no longer matches the history on the remote, you will need to use a forced push; regular push will fail.

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Mauro Accorinti

Oh shoot! You're totally right. You're the first person to bring that up 😄

I updated the line. Thanks for making Billy a better developer!

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Wilhelm Erasmus

Now Billy can be the hero by using the distributed architecture and his newly-found git-fu to magically save everyone's work.
Perhaps he will also pin some bugs on Trent: github.com/jayphelps/git-blame-som...

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Mauro Accorinti

This is MASTERFUL. I love how this project even exists.

And maybe! Now that he's gotten all that evil out of his system, maybe he can put out some good in the world.

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Lev N.

Wild ride, Billy sure is a menace to the company™.

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Mauro Accorinti

Oh absolutely. Everybody should worry how he codes if this is his way of learning hahaha

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Jerry

Damn, tricked me into reading an article about git.

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Jerry

Also, I read this in the Stanley Parables narrators voice.

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Mauro Accorinti

You know, it was kind of the vibe I was going for.

Plus that man's voice is smooth as butter so it only made the experience better

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Mauro Accorinti

Muahahaha

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Ayush

Materpiece😂

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softgauresh

Excellent article thanks for sharing

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Mauro Accorinti

Thank you for reading

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softgauresh

I really like your sense of humour...way of thinking is totally super ...looking forward to collaborate with you ...

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softgauresh • Edited

Will take your help in furture definitely...really fan of your post ..looking forward for such a post
Really fan of your post

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Marissa B

Billy as an agent of chaos was hilarious. Great article.

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Mauro Accorinti

Super happy you enjoyed it!

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Obed Nyakundi Paul

lol. It was an amazing read.

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Mauro Accorinti

Thank you!

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Bruno

This made me laugh big time, Billy knows always how to get things done, even getting fired haha! Good read and eye opener for every developer :D

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Mauro Accorinti

Thank you!

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Parimal

I hope there were Cameras in place and evidence that shows Trent was just a bit careless and Billy was behind this.

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Mauro Accorinti

I mean, if the company doesn't have basic permissions so nobody posts on Main, you think they care enough for cameras? 👀

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Kanish Ravikumar

All this time, this wasn't Billy's story, it was Trent's villian origin story

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Mauro Accorinti

Trent gonna come back with a vengence and with the git reflog

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Levi Johnson

This article is excellent! Thank you for the laughs and for reminding us of important work principles. I really enjoy learning from articles that incorporate humor. I'm eager for more laughs and learning. ;)

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Mauro Accorinti

Aww thank you Levi! We'll see what else I have cooked up for in the future

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C9

This is best git tutorial i ever read.

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Mauro Accorinti

Thank you my kind friend

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Stephen Dicks

Its a shame you didn't mention git push --force-with-lease which is the correct way to do git force pushes.

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Mauro Accorinti

You are absolutely right. I added it as a sort of mention so others know it exists. Added it cause you and another commenter brought it up. Thank you

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Valdinei dos Santos

Disable send and merge in main branch, only permitted send for feature/Fix/others work branch. This resolve 80% issue problems. Merge only after receive 2 code reviews approved.

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Mauro Accorinti

Yes, absolutely and completely agree!

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TyIsI

Thanks for the laugh! It's giving me BOFH vibes!

(And I just found Enterprise Developer From Hell!)

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Mauro Accorinti

I have never heard of BOFH! I looked over it a bit and yeah I can see it hahaha

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inn0cent_zer0

Nice article. Thanks for sharing.

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Nikola Perišić

hahahah nice

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Tarek Bohdima

enjoyed it till the last line, please keep writing "dumb" articles , it's educative and more important "not boring". and you are natural !

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Mauro Accorinti

Aww thank you! I think silly is the better term here but I have been blown away by how much others have enjoyed it. Thanks again

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Pindelrio

Very funny!. We want more Billy stories

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Mauro Accorinti

Maybe in the future 😉

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Sujit Kumar

hahaha...

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Nathan G Bornstein

Absolute god-tier article. This sets a new genre for dev.to

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Shrijal Acharya

Love the humor. 🙌

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Mauro Accorinti

Thanks!

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Rey

LOL, this is scaring me hahaha

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Mauro Accorinti

It's the good kind of scared 😄

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Najm El-Deen Nabhani

I feel more sorry for the on-call than for Trent!

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Chandrashekhar Mehta

awesome, humorous explanation!!

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Michal Šrámek

This is exactly why in our company I call for the enforcement of proper security measures in GitHub. Anyway, funny and true story bro! 😉

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Mauro Accorinti

Absolutely!!! Always have good security measures.

And thank you for the comment 😄

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Miko

hahaha, a git article i enjoyed reading for once

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Edydeyemi

This was quite fun to read, yet educative as well. Thanks for sharing

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Mauro Accorinti

Thank you for reading!

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priti roy

great article!

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Mauro Accorinti

Thank you!!

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Dave Schuster

Love it! It's not worth doing if you can't have some fun (okay, not that kind)!

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Mauro Accorinti

Exaaaactly, you get it! hahaha

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deepak-hce

I learned a lot with fun and laugh. Thank you.

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Mauro Accorinti

Thank you for reading!

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Ozgur

Your article turned the complexity of git commands into a delightful learning experience. Kudos for making technical education so engaging!

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Mauro Accorinti

Aww thank you Ozgur!

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Spondon

one of the best articles i read today, love it!!

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Mauro Accorinti

Thanks a ton for the love! Appreciate it

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Nineisten

Not all Billy's wear capes. Amazing article.

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Mauro Accorinti

Thank you for the kindness 😄

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Osni Oliveira

Remote work would have prevented Billy from doing it all, just saying... =D

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Mauro Accorinti

That is SUCH a good point though!!

Viva la revolución for remote work hahaha

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Mahbod Ahmadi

The only thing Trent must do is set password for his laptop.

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Sin No Aria (AI Sin)

Google github prophecy?