[Solved] Unable to push branch because the branch is behind the deployed branch. Using --force to deploy branch

Problem:

Running into the following error when trying to use the akhileshns/heroku-deploy GitHub Action in a GitHub Actions workflow:

error: failed to push some refs to 'https://git.heroku.com/nextjs-github-actions-heroku.git'

    Unable to push branch because the branch is behind the deployed branch. Using --force to deploy branch.
    (If you want to avoid this, set dontuseforce to 1 in with: of .github/workflows/action.yml.
    Specifically, the error was: Error: Command failed: git push heroku HEAD:refs/heads/master

Solution:

I was able to solve this issue by changing the version of the akhileshns/heroku-deploy GitHub Action from 3.12.12 to 3.7.8. Also, you might have to remove the 12.x and 16.x node versions from the node-version array if those versions are failing when the GitHub Actions workflow completes. Here is the full workflow yaml file that resolved this issue:

name: Node.js CI

on:
  push:
    branches: [ master ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ master ]

jobs:
  build:

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    strategy:
      matrix:
        node-version: [14.x]
        # See supported Node.js release schedule at https://nodejs.org/en/about/releases/

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: Deploy to Heroku
      uses: akhileshns/heroku-deploy@v3.7.8
      with:
        args: deploy --dir=build --prod
        heroku_api_key: ${{ secrets.HEROKU_API_KEY }}
        heroku_app_name: 'nextjs-github-actions-heroku'
        heroku_email: '<enter_your_email>@gmail.com'

Conclusion

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