Git: “You can only push your own commits in this repository” – when there actually is a problem

Posted by on January 25, 2021

I ran into this recently by creating a new Bitbucket repository when having a spelling error in my mail address in settings. I got this error:

remote: You can only push your own commits in this repository
remote: Commit 85eb7acbf42a14b9 was committed by Niklas Ottosson (username) <niklas@worldwideweeb.com>

In the commit 85eb7acbf42a14b9 (initial commit of the new repository) my mail was niklas@worldwideweeb.com when it should have been niklas@worldwideweb.com (only one ‘e’ in ‘web’)

To fix this we need to make sure we have the correct mail address in global settings:

git config --global user.email niklas@worldwideweb.com

and then reset the author of the initial commit

git commit --amend --reset-author --no-edit

This will now replace the previous author with me, and since I now have the correct spelling the commit will be “fixed”

Tested with Git 2.24.3

VCS

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