Is it possible to squish and rename git commits on remote repository without push --force

Question

I need to squish and rename some commits in remote repository history. I can do it on my branch with git rebase -i but trying to push it using git push --force gives me errors. It says remote: error: denying non-fast-forward refs/heads/master . So is there a way around this or do I need to have setting on the remote repository modified to allow this?

Answer 1

The only way to avoid the non-fast forward push is to first delete the remote branch and then push it again.

git push origin :master
git push origin master

Note that you may need to set receive.denyDeleteCurrent to ignore or warn to allow deleting the branch.