This fixes a problem I was seeing in the assistant where two remotes would
attempt to sync with one another at the same time, and both failed pushing
the diverged git-annex branch. Then when both tried to resolve the failed
push, they each modified their git-annex branch, which again each blocked
the other from pushing into it. The result was that the git-annex
branches were perpetually diverged (despite having the same content!) and
once the assistant fell into this trap, it couldn't get out and always
had to do the slow push/fail/pull/merge/push/fail cycle.