How do I ignore an error on git pull about my local changes would be overwritten by merge

Question

How do I ignore the following error message on Git pull      Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge   What if I want to overwrite them   I ve tried things like git pull -f  but nothing works   To be clear  I only want to overwrite specific changes  not everything

User · Answer

Here is my strategy to solve the problem.

Problem Statement

We need to make changes in more than 10 files. We tried PULL (git pull origin master), but Git shouted:

error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge: Please, commit your changes or stash them before you can merge.

We tried to execute commit and then pull, but they didn't work either.

Solution

We were in the dirty stage actually, because the files were in the "Staging Area" a.k.a "Index Area" and some were in the "Head Area" a.k.a "local Git directory". And we wanted to pull the changes from the server.

Check this link for information about different stages of Git in a clear manner: GIT Stages

We followed the following steps

git stash (this made our working directory clean. Your changes are stored on the stack by Git).
git pull origin master (Pull the changes from the server)
git stash apply (Applied all the changes from stack)
git commit -m 'message' (Committed the changes)
git push origin master (Pushed the changes to the server)
git stash drop (Drop the stack)

Let's understand when and why you need stashing

If you are in the dirty state, means you are making changes in your files and then you are compelled, due to any reason, to pull or switch to another branch for some very urgent work, so at this point you can't pull or switch until you commit your change. The stash command is here as a helping hand.

From the book ProGIT, 2nd Edition:

Often, when you’ve been working on part of your project, things are in a messy state and you want to switch branches for a bit to work on something else. The problem is, you don’t want to do a commit of half-done work just so you can get back to this point later. The answer to this issue is the git stash command. Stashing takes the dirty state of your working directory – that is, your modified tracked files and staged changes – and saves it on a stack of unfinished changes that you can reapply at any time.

User · Answer

My solution was delete the files from outside the IDE that are going to be overwritten  then pull     you can always backup and manually merge untracked data

User · Answer

This problem is because you have made changes locally to file s and the same file s exists with changes in the Git repository  so before pull push you will need stash local changes   To overwrite local changes of a single file   git reset file to overwrite git checkout file to overwrite   To overwrite all the local changes  changes in all files    git stash git pull git stash pop   Also this problem may be because of you are on a branch which is not merged with the master branch

User · Answer

Sometimes  none of these work   Annoyingly  due to the LF thing I think  what will work is deleting the files  then pulling   Not that I recommend this solution  but if the file doesn t exist  git won t uselessly inform you that your changes  which may not even be changes  will get overridden  and will let you continue   Use at your own risk

User · Answer

In the recent Git  you can add -r --rebase on pull command to rebase your current branch on top of the upstream branch after fetching  The warning should disappear  but there is a risk that you ll get some conflicts which you ll need to solve     Alternatively you can checkout different branch with force  then go back to master again  e g    git checkout origin master -f git checkout master -f   Then pull it again as usual   git pull origin master   Using this method can save you time from stashing  git stash  and potential permission issues  reseting files  git reset HEAD --hard   removing files  git clean -fd   etc  Also the above it s easier to remember

User · Answer

If you want to overwrite specific changes  you need some way of telling it which ones you want to forget   You could try selectively stashing the changes you want to abandon using git stash --patch and then dropping that stash with git stash drop  You can then pull in the remote changes and merge them as normal

User · Answer

Error  Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge  comes because you have some changes in the local repo that have NOT been commited yet  so before pulling from remote repo just commit the changes in local repo   Lets say your remote repo has some branch xyz and you want that remote repo xyz branch to be merged into  copied to  local repo xyz branch then     git checkout xyz                    check out to the respective branch in local repo git commit -m  commiting message    commit changes if any  in local repo branch xyz git pull                            it pulls remote xyz branch into local xyz branch

User · Answer

Alright with the help of the other two answers I ve come up with a direct solution   git checkout HEAD  file to overwrite git pull

User · Answer

You can use this for overwrite file  git checkout file to overwrite

User · Answer

Try this git fetch --all   git reset --hard origin master  git pull origin master  It s work for me to force pull

User · Answer

This message can also happen if git-lfs is used and a file pointer was overwritten by a real file   then you use   git stash git lfs migrate import git pull   full output from my case    git stash Saved working directory and index state WIP on master  5d4ad47 Merge branch  feature      into  master  Encountered 1 file s  that should have been pointers  but weren t          public apple-touch-icon png    git pull Updating 5a4ad44  b25f79d error  Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge          public apple-touch-icon png Please commit your changes or stash them before you merge  Aborting    git lfs migrate import migrate  Fetching remote refs       done migrate  Sorting commits       done migrate  Rewriting commits  100   0 0   done migrate  Updating refs       done migrate  checkout       done     git pull Updating 5d4ad47  a25c79a Fast-forward  public apple-touch-icon png   Bin 2092 - gt  130 bytes  public favicon ico            Bin 6518 - gt  1150 bytes  2 files changed  0 insertions     0 deletions -    see https   github com git-lfs git-lfs issues 2839

User · Answer

For Pycharm  you can do Git-- Revert and then pull

User · Answer

I was ignoring a file in my repo and when I did git pull upstream master I got the following error      error  Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge    myfile js   Please  commit your changes or stash them before you can merge    Aborting   To resolve it I did the following  git update-index --no-assume-unchanged myfile js   I then did git status and got this message     On branch master Your branch is behind  origin master  by 4 commits    and can be fast-forwarded     use  git pull  to update your local   branch       Changes not staged for commit     use  git add      to update   what will be committed     use  git checkout --      to discard   changes in working directory       modified    myfile js      no changes added to commit  use  git add  and or  git commit -a     Then I did git checkout myfile js followed by git pull upstream master  This time the git pull operation was successful

User · Answer

The simplest solution is   git reset --hard  amp  amp  git pull

User · Answer

I had a special case of this  I had a file with --assume-unchanged on it  It was hard to locate  as the git status command was not showing any changes

User · Answer

If you want to keep production changes on the server  just merge into a new configuration item  The processing method is as follows   git stash git pull git stash pop   Maybe you don t execute all operations  You can know what you can do next

User · Answer

If this error is because of line endings   git add git checkout mybranch   will  work  I m not really sure why it works

User · Answer

The best way to solve this problem is   git checkout --  lt path file name gt    After that you can overwrite the file by   git pull origin master

User · Answer

I m new in git and not sure if my solution is a good idea   I ve tested ALL of answers and none of them worked for me   But I found another solution   1  Backup both of local and repository versions of the file  2  Delete the file from repository  3  git add   4  git commit 5  git push   Hope this helps

User · Answer

This works for me to override all local changes and does not require an identity   git reset --hard git pull

User · Answer

I have tried and it successfully  before pulling  let commit all file that you have not committed  then you will not receive that messages from AS

User · Answer

Simply commit the local changes and merge commit -a

User · Answer

So many answers here that I hate to add yet another  but all of the above are clunkier than they need to be   I have to do this all the time as Git seems to become confused and says I have modified files that have not changed  can t revert because they didn t change  but I can t pull because they supposedly have changed   Simplest and fastest I ve found so far is  git stash git stash drop git pull  NOTICE  local changes will be lost

User · Answer

Check the file which you are okay to overwrite and lose local changes and then git checkout --ours   filePath  git merge upstream master

User · Answer

If you want remove all local changes - including files that are untracked by git - from your working copy  simply stash them   git stash push --include-untracked   If you don t need them anymore  you now can drop that stash   git stash drop   If you don t want to stash changes that you already staged - e g  with git add - then add the option --keep-index  Note however  that this will still prevent merging if those staged changes collide with the ones from upstream     If you want to overwrite only specific parts of your local changes  there are two possibilities    Commit everything you don t want to overwrite and use the method above for the rest  Use git checkout path to file to revert for the changes you wish to overwrite  Make sure that file is not staged via git reset HEAD path to file to revert

User · Answer

git reset --hard  amp  amp  git clean -df  Caution  This will reset and delete any untracked files

User · Answer

If your repository contains a few files which are removed from master    git checkout master git fetch origin git reset --hard origin master git checkout -b newbranch

User · Answer

You can either commit your changes before you do the merge  or you stash them    git stash save git merge origin master git stash pop

User · Answer

This worked for me to discard changes on the live remote server and pull from the source control GitHub   git reset --hard git pull origin master

User · Answer

git pull --rebase --autostash     -r  --rebase  false true merges preserve interactive        When true  rebase the current branch on top of the        upstream branch after fetching  If there is a        remote-tracking branch corresponding to the upstream      --autostash  --no-autostash       Before starting rebase  stash local modifications away if       needed  and apply the stash entry when done    I do not know why this is not answered yet  but solution  as you can see is simple  All answers here suggest same  to delete save your local changes and apply upstream  then  if you save  apply your local changes on top  What git pull --rebase --autostash does step-by-step  1  your local changes saved by  --autostash  2  your local commits saved by  --rebase  3  commits from upstream applied to your branch 4  your local commits are restored on top of upstream 5  your local changes are restored to working directory  My case  probably yours too   I have local changes  changes at working directory    When I try to pull remote changes I get error   This changes do not intersect with local changes   So when I pull --rebase --autostash local changes saved and applied without any problem automatically  Now my local changes are little lower

User · Answer

Here is a solution that throws away staged changes   git reset file to overwrite git checkout file to overwrite

User · Answer

I got the same error-message executed the  PluginUpdate command from the vim editors command-line      Please commit your changes or stash them before you merge    1  just physically removed the folder contained the plugins form the  rm -rf    vim bundle plugin-folder    2  and reinstalled it form the vim commandline  PluginInstall  because my    vimrc contained the instructions to build the plugin to that destination     this created the proper folder  and got  new package into that folder     vim bundle reinstalled-plugins-folder The     signs  due to the unsuccessful PluginUpdate command  were changed to     signs  and after that worked the PluginUpdate command to

User · Answer

I encountered this when pulling from the master   The way I handled it  using Visual Studio    First  I performed Undo commit on my solution  Then I did the Git pull process    Hope this helps

User · Answer

git stash save --keep-index did not worked for me   below command worked as expected    git reset --hard git pull   It override all local changes if you don t need them

User · Answer

If you want to discard your local changes on one file you can do the following   git checkout --  lt file gt    Then you could overwrite the file s  with the latest version just doing   git pull

[git] How do I ignore an error on 'git pull' about my local changes would be overwritten by merge?

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