How can I use git rebase without requiring a forced push?

Rebasing is a great tool, but it works best when you use it to create fast-forward merges for topic branches onto master. For example, you might rebase your add-new-widget branch against master:

git checkout add-new-widget
git rebase -i master

before performing a fast-forward merge of the branch into master. For example:

git checkout master
git merge --ff-only add-new-widget

The benefit of this is that your history won't have a lot of complex merge commits or merge conflicts, because all your changes will be rebased onto the tip of master before the merge. A secondary benefit is that you've rebased, but you don't have to use git push --force because you are not clobbering history on the master branch.

That's certainly not the only use case for rebase, or the only workflow, but it's one of the more sensible uses for it that I've seen. YMMV.

@CodeGnome is right. You should not rebase master on v1.0 branch but v1.0 branch on master, that will make all the difference.

git checkout -b integrate_patches v1.0
git rebase master
git checkout master
git merge integrate_patches

Create a new branch that points to v1.0, move that new branch on top of master and then integrate the new version of the V1.0 patches to the master branch. You will end up with something like :

o [master] [integrate_patches] Another patch on v1.0
o A patch on v1.0
o Another change for the next major release
o Working on the next major release
|  o [v1.0] Another path on v1.0
|  o A patch on v1.0
| /
o Time for the release

This way to use rebase is recommended by the official git documentation.

I think you are right about git push --force : you should only use it if you made a mistake and pushed something you did not want.

You have to force push if you rebase, and you have already published your changes, right?

I use rebase a whole bunch, but I either publish to something private where a force push doesn't matter (eg: my own clone on GitHub, as part of a pull request), or I rebase before I push for the first time.

This is the heart of the workflow where you use rebase, but don't force push much: don't publish things until they are ready, don't rebase after you push.