Does Using 'git push -f' On A Remote Repo Refresh The Entire Folder?

Question

I have a GIT repo for an application. The application starts a long running process that I want to keep running in the background.

When I make a change to any of the application config files, commit those changes, and then git-push those changes, everything works fine. The long running process picks up the config changes I've pushed.

Sometimes though, I make a mistake in the commit history and purge those commits with a rebase. I then use git push -f to force the purged changes through. Doing so kills the long running process.

Why would that be?

As I understand it, when I git-push commits, it will only change the lines of code that I have edited.

Am I right in thinking that using git push -f instead changes more than just the lines in the commits I've purged? I suspect the git push -f command is also refreshing (though not changing) other application files in the repo, if not all of them, and that's why the process dies on a rollback attempt...

Does anyone have a definitive answer?

Answer 1

Though I still have my suspicions, I think the issue may have just been caused by a careless commit that overwrites the file that the process is based on.

If I discover anything new (as likely as that might be), then I will update the answer. Thanks for the help.

Update :

I'm pretty sure that it's not GIT now. It was because the long running process prints out messages to the terminal. When I was testing the GIT hook, I always had an SSH terminal open, so the program ran fine. But when I closed the terminal and made an upstream push from my remote machine, the application had no terminal to print messages to...

Doh.

Accounting for this appears to work.