René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"gh stack sync can fail force-with-lease push after fetching stack branches","articleBody":"## Summary\n\n`gh stack sync` can fetch and rebase a stack successfully, then fail during the final force push because the push uses a bare `--force-with-lease` with branch names instead of explicit destination refs and lease SHAs.\n\nThis is most visible in checkouts where local branch upstream/tracking configuration is missing, stale, or does not line up with the branches that `gh stack sync` just fetched.\n\n## Problem\n\nToday the push shape is effectively:\n\n```console\ngit fetch origin b1\ngit rebase ...\ngit push origin --force-with-lease --atomic b1\n```\n\nThe failure happens at the final `git push`. Git has to infer both the destination branch and the expected lease value from local branch configuration / remote-tracking refs. If that inference does not match the refs that `gh stack sync` just fetched, the push can be rejected even though the command already refreshed the relevant stack branch.\n\n## Expected Behavior\n\nAfter `gh stack sync` fetches stack branches, the subsequent force push should use the fetched local tracking refs as the lease source.\n\nFor example:\n\n```console\ngit fetch origin b1\ngit rebase ...\ngit rev-parse --verify --quiet refs/remotes/origin/b1\ngit push origin --force-with-lease=refs/heads/b1:\u003cfetched-sha\u003e --atomic b1:refs/heads/b1\n```\n\nIf someone updates `b1` after the fetch, the push should still fail safely because `refs/heads/b1` no longer equals `\u003cfetched-sha\u003e`.\n\nIf `b1` did not have a local tracking ref, the lease should use an empty expected value, so creating the remote branch still fails if someone created it first.\n\n## Proposed Fix\n\nBuild explicit per-branch force-with-lease arguments:\n\n```console\n--force-with-lease=refs/heads/\u003cbranch\u003e:\u003ctracking-ref-sha\u003e\n```\n\nand push with explicit local-to-remote refspecs:\n\n```console\n\u003cbranch\u003e:refs/heads/\u003cbranch\u003e\n```\n\nThis avoids relying on Git's branch/upstream inference while preserving the stale-ref safety guarantee of `--force-with-lease`.\n\n## Related PR\nI have a fix in my fork for reference https://github.com/ravi-pplx/gh-stack/pull/1\n","author":{"url":"https://github.com/ravi-pplx","@type":"Person","name":"ravi-pplx"},"datePublished":"2026-06-07T23:44:56.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":0},"url":"https://github.com/118/gh-stack/issues/118"}