Removing a bad merge on local and remote repository?

Question

I'm working on a github branch off of master.  Recently after merging master into my branch I did a commit and push to the remote repository, then discovered something bad happened during the merge.  I don't know how to get past the bad merge that's now in the remote.  I can reset my local repository to my previous good commit on my branch to continue work, but when I want to commit and push up to the remote repository, I can't because the remote is ahead of my local (by the bad commit).  I can't pull from the remote because the bad commit messes up my local so I can't build.  How do I recover from this?

Michael_Heins · Answer

Thank you both for your suggestions.  I ended up figuring out how to repair the code from the bad commit, and then checked in the repaired code.

Balázs Szakmáry · Answer

You have two options:

* Rewrite history: Do the changes as described and force push to the server (SourceTree does not seem to be able to do this, you need something else, e.g. cmd or GitExtensions.)
* Leave history as it is and fix the code: Revert the bad commit (since it is a merge commit, you need to either create a custom action in SourceTree to have the -m switch or do it from another client), push it to the server and commit on top of that as usual.

Seth · Answer

You probably won't be able to do this from the SourceTree UI, but you can definitely push the fix using the command line. I think the parameter is --force, but I would recommend a quick google search to confirm.