All 'merge' commands failing

[StevenXL]

Hi,

When I run any command, such as git sync or git append, git-town will run git merge --no-edit main at some point.

All of these are failing with:

fatal: Not possible to fast-forward, aborting.

It I add --no-ff to the command git-town is running, things work. Is appending this something I can ask git-town to do automatically? Is that a dangerous thing to do?

[kevgo]

Thanks for reaching out about this. Git Town v14.1 adds the --ff switch to the merge commands to fix issues that users who have merge.ff set to false. This seems to conflict with your setup. To investigate this issue, can you please post the output of git config -l? Please anonymize confidential info like tokens. Thanks!

[StevenXL]

I can confirm that I am using Git Town 14.1.0.

I am attaching the output of git config -l. Thank you for warning me about the token. I'm OK with my email / name out there.

file.txt

[StevenXL]

Ah - it looks like I have merge.ff=only, and from the manual:

With --ff-only, resolve the merge as a fast-forward when possible. When not possible, refuse to merge and exit with a non-zero status.

So it can't do a fast-forward, so it fails.

[kevgo]

Excellent, thanks for helping investigate this issue! I have created #3408 that should fix this.

Please note that this fix relaxes the ff-only rules you have set for merging parent and tracking branches to use merge commits if needed. Branches can get so much out of sync that it's not always possible to fast-forward them. If this doesn't work for you, you could try setting the sync-feature-strategy to rebase. Git Town will then rebase your feature branches against their parent and tracking branches, thereby avoiding merge commits.

[kevgo]

Note: this is not because of the new --ff switch but because of the lack of it in other Git commands run by Git Town. The concurrent timing with the rollout of v14.1 seems just coincidence.

[StevenXL]

Thank you - and let me say that I am very glad I found this tool. It's pretty awesome - particularly it's stacked diffs support; game-changer for my workflow!

[kevgo]

Thanks for saying that - it really means a lot! Please help spread the word 🙂

[kevgo]

Git Town v14.2 contains the fix. Please give it a try and reach out if you have any other feedback or suggestions.