Did you try using branches? This is probably the best solution for you. Create a branch called local in your local repository and keep master on remote repository. With this solution you don’t need to pull before a push every time you changes something, yuo can push every time you want to remote and from there (on github) create a pull request to see if the changes made on the local branch is able to merge in master. When you need to work in the local master you can checkout and pull.

Github Desktop does not let me pull without a push at all to begin with. I tried to do it via cmd instead by using git pull origin master command, but it still showed the same message and aborted the pull execution.

That’s because it’s not a problem of github desktop but it’s git that tell to you that it cannot merge the same branch (in this case master) that are divergent in history.

Assume the following history:

                      A—B---C local/master

                  A—B---C origin/master

Now you edit some files in local master and create a new commit, at the same time someone else create a new commit to the origin master. The new history will be:

                      A—B---C—D local/master

                  A—B---C—E origin/master

You can see local/master and origin/master diverged because there are the commit D and E before the relative commit C. Now you want to try to pull the origin/master on local, but git cannot know what of the commits are made first so it cannot merge the origin/master into local/master. To prevent this you can create a new branch from the local/master before the new commits:

                                      local/new                   

                                    /

                      A—B---C local/master

                  A—B---C origin/master

Create the same commits as before:

                                      D local/new                   

                                    /

                      A—B---C local/master

                  A—B---C—E origin/master

Now you have 2 choices:

1. Pull the origin/master into local/master :

                                      D local/new                   

                                    /

                      A—B---C—E local/master
                                      /
                  A—B---C—E origin/master

Merge the local/new into local/master and push the local/master into origin :

                                       D       local/new

                                    /       \

                      A—B---C—E---D local/master
                                      /      /
                   A—B---C—E---D origin/master

2. Push the local/new to origin/new :

                                       D  local/new

                                    /      

                      A—B---C local/master
                                          
                   A—B---C—E origin/master

                                 \

                                   D origin/new

And from there (github) create a pull request to see if everything is ok and in the end merge (if possible, if not you can see this post):

                   A—B---C—E---D origin/master

                                       /

                                    D   origin/new

I know that it seems difficult but every time you do that become even more simply.

Is there any way to do this? Would I ideally need to use a hook to do this?

You can use the pre-push hook:

The pre-push hook runs during git push, after the remote refs have been updated but before any objects have been transferred. It receives the name and location of the remote as parameters, and a list of to-be-updated refs through stdin. You can use it to validate a set of ref updates before a push occurs (a non-zero exit code will abort the push).

but you dont need that, it’s better to use branch to do what you asked.

Hope this helps 🙂  

-Gabriele-

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