git: Duplicate Commits After Local Rebase Followed by Pull

Question

I have a local git repository and I run the following:

git.exe pull -v --no-rebase --progress "origin" // pull 1
(make a few local commits)
git.exe pull -v --no-rebase --progress "origin" // pull 2
git log --pretty=format:"%h - %an : %s"         // log 1
git rebase -i HEAD~4
(move local commit 1 down 2 positions)
git log --pretty=format:"%h - %an : %s"         // log 2
git.exe pull -v --no-rebase --progress "origin" // pull 3
git log --pretty=format:"%h - %an : %s"         // log 3

After doing this all commits to the remote repository that I retrieved in pull 1 are now duplicated in the log.

Log 1 looks like this:

84e4015 - Me : Local Commit 3
0dbe86a - Me : Local Commit 2
d57ba2a - Me : Merge branch 'master' of remote repository
a86ea35 - Me : Local Commit 1 before reordering
2fc4fe7 - Remote User 2 : Remote Commit 2
b7a8656 - Remote User 1 : Remote Commit 1
8ce80fc - Me : Merge branch 'master' of remote repository

Log 2 looks like this:

cf1ff7b - Me : Local Commit 3
cd14463 - Me : Local Commit 2
b9d44fb - Me : Local Commit 1 after reordering
9777c56 - Remote User 2 : Remote Commit 2
a2d7d8b - Remote User 1 : Remote Commit 1
8ce80fc - Me : Merge branch 'master' of remote repository

And log 3 looks like this:

e8e1a85 - Me : Merge branch 'master' of remote repository
cf1ff7b - Me : Local Commit 3
cd14463 - Me : Local Commit 2
b9d44fb - Me : Local Commit 1 after reordering
9777c56 - Remote User 2 : Remote Commit 2
a2d7d8b - Remote User 1 : Remote Commit 1
2fc4fe7 - Remote User 2 : Remote Commit 2 // duplicate 2
b7a8656 - Remote User 1 : Remote Commit 1 // duplicate 1
8ce80fc - Me : Merge branch 'master' of remote repository

What have I done wrong? How do I prevent? How do I fix?

Note that I've never pushed to the remote repository, only pulled from it and made local commits. Also note that there are a lot of similarly titled threads to this question but all of them are a little different and the answers there don't seem to apply here.

Answer 1

It's not you, it's the remote users. It looks like they have rebased commits that you have already based work on, then pushed back to origin. Not very sociable.

The clue is that remote users' commit refs change from log1 to log2 - they rebased and pushed their work. But your work is based on their pre-rebased commits. So your local repo contains those two commits (2fc4fe7, b7a8656) that their rebase has eradicated from their repo and origin (presumably they pushed with a --force). So when you then pull from origin those local commits appear to be reincarnated to ensure your commit history is preserved, and the remote users' rebased commits (9777c56, a2d7d8b) are merged too. Hence the duplicates.