Link Search Menu Expand Document
CS156

Help! I pulled from the wrong starter

Here is an example of what it might look like if you pulled from the wrong starter repo, and how to fix it.

First, the part that’s correct

Here, we clone a jpa01-fakeStudent repo, and we see that the origin remote is correct:

pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro ucsb-cs156-s22 % git clone git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/jpa01-fakeStudent.git
Cloning into 'jpa01-fakeStudent'...
warning: You appear to have cloned an empty repository.
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro ucsb-cs156-s22 % cd jpa01-fakeStudent 
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % git remote -v
origin	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/jpa01-fakeStudent.git (fetch)
origin	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/jpa01-fakeStudent.git (push)
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent %

Now, we set up the wrong starter

We intended to set up STARTER-jpa01 as our starter, but instead we set up STARTER-jpa00:

pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % git remote add starter git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/STARTER-jpa00.git    
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % git remote -v
origin	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/jpa01-fakeStudent.git (fetch)
origin	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/jpa01-fakeStudent.git (push)
starter	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/STARTER-jpa00.git (fetch)
starter	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/STARTER-jpa00.git (push)
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent %

Ouch! starter refers to git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/STARTER-jpa00.git when we intended git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/STARTER-jpa01.git

We can see that when we type git remote -v

Doubling down

Now suppose we double down on the error and populate the repo with the wrong code

pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % git checkout -b main
Switched to a new branch 'main'
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % git pull starter main
remote: Enumerating objects: 39, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (39/39), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (18/18), done.
remote: Total 39 (delta 14), reused 39 (delta 14), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (39/39), 7.81 KiB | 420.00 KiB/s, done.
From github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/STARTER-jpa00
 * branch            main       -> FETCH_HEAD
 * [new branch]      main       -> starter/main
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % git push origin main
Enumerating objects: 39, done.
Counting objects: 100% (39/39), done.
Delta compression using up to 16 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (32/32), done.
Writing objects: 100% (39/39), 7.83 KiB | 2.61 MiB/s, done.
Total 39 (delta 14), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (14/14), done.
To github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/jpa01-fakeStudent.git
 * [new branch]      main -> main
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % ls
LICENSE		README.md	pom.xml		src
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent %

Now, the wrong code is in our repo. What to do!?!? Should we just delete the repo and start over?!!

We could. But there’s a better way.

Fixing it

The first step in fixing it is to remove the old remote:

pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % git remote -v
origin	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/jpa01-fakeStudent.git (fetch)
origin	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/jpa01-fakeStudent.git (push)
starter	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/STARTER-jpa00.git (fetch)
starter	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/STARTER-jpa00.git (push)
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % git remote remove starter
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % git remote -v
origin	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/jpa01-fakeStudent.git (fetch)
origin	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/jpa01-fakeStudent.git (push)
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent %

Now redfine it as the correct one:

pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % git remote add starter git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/STARTER-jpa01.git 
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % git remote -v
origin	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/jpa01-fakeStudent.git (fetch)
origin	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/jpa01-fakeStudent.git (push)
starter	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/STARTER-jpa01.git (fetch)
starter	git@github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/STARTER-jpa01.git (push)
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent %

Hooray! The starter remote now points to the right place!

But I still have the wrong code?!?

First, we need to be on the main branch:

git checkout main

Now we use three tools:

  • git fetch starter will update our local cache of where all of the branches in the starter remote point to.
  • git reset --hard remote/branch will allow us to reset our current branch to any remote/branch.
    • Think of it like a “pointer assignment”.
    • The --hard part means that we are also going to update the file system to match
  • git push origin main -f will allow us to push the new, redfined main branch to GitHub, overwriting the old values.

Here’s what that looks like:

pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % git fetch starter
remote: Enumerating objects: 109, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (109/109), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (39/39), done.
remote: Total 109 (delta 33), reused 109 (delta 33), pack-reused 0
Receiving objects: 100% (109/109), 13.43 KiB | 6.71 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (33/33), done.
From github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/STARTER-jpa01
 * [new branch]      main       -> starter/main
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % git reset --hard starter/main
HEAD is now at d5dec6b AL - Set Actions workflow timeout to 10 minutes
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % ls 
README.md	pom.xml		src
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent % git push origin main -f
Enumerating objects: 109, done.
Counting objects: 100% (109/109), done.
Delta compression using up to 16 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (39/39), done.
Writing objects: 100% (109/109), 13.43 KiB | 13.43 MiB/s, done.
Total 109 (delta 33), reused 109 (delta 33), pack-reused 0
remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (33/33), done.
To github.com:ucsb-cs156-s22/jpa01-fakeStudent.git
 + 4167080...d5dec6b main -> main (forced update)
pconrad@Phillips-MacBook-Pro jpa01-fakeStudent %

And that is how we do that. You now have the correct code, from the correct starter, as if you had done everything right in the first place, and no-one is the wiser.