[git] Unlink of file Failed. Should I try again?

Something wrong is going on with one of the files in my local git repository. When I'm trying to change the branch it says:

Unlink of file 'templates/media/container.html' failed. Should I try again? (y/n)

What could that mean?

You might see that error less often with Git 2.29 (Q4 2020): the "unlink" emulation on MinGW has been optimized.

See commit 680e0b4 (17 Aug 2020) by Jeff Hostetler (Jeff-Hostetler).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 5a04826, 19 Aug 2020)}

mingw: improve performance of mingw_unlink()

^{Signed-off-by: Jeff Hostetler
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin}

Update mingw_unlink() to first try to delete the file with existing permissions before trying to force it.

Windows throws an error when trying to delete a read-only file.
The mingw_unlink() compatibility wrapper always tries to _wchmod(666) the file before calling _wunlink() to avoid that error.
However, since most files in the worktree are already writable, this is usually wasted effort.

Update mingw_unlink() to just call DeleteFileW() directly and if that succeeds return.
If that fails, fall back into the existing code path to update the permissions and use _wunlink() to get the existing error code mapping.

I got this problem in Windows. I closed my IDE (Android Studio) and selected YES in git shell. It worked.

On Windows, saw this error on a git clone of a (fairly large) repo. Closed SmartGit and paused my backup software (CrashPlan), and after that it worked. Not sure which of the 2 did the trick, but if running either, this might do it for you too.

Worked for me, Tried on windows:

Stop your server running from IDE or close your IDE

Intellij/Ecllipse or any, it will work.

This might be useful for someone; if all the above didn't work for you, follow these steps:

1. Close your IDE (mine was Eclipse, not sure if it applies to Intellij and others) or any other app that might be using git.

2. Open git from the command line (in my case I had git bash) and run git gc as mentioned by others.

This did the magic for me.

this solution from here worked for me:

This is a Windows specific answer, so I'm aware that it's not relevant to you... I'm just including it for the benefit of future searchers.

In my case, it was because I was running Git from a non-elevated command line. "Run as Administrator" fixed it for me.

In my situation the cause was that I had ran Visual Studio as an administrator earlier in the day. When I went to switch branches the error occurred.

I use GitExtensions and I run it as a regular users and files created by VS while running as an administrator ( run as Administrator, still me though) were not accessible. This was the root of the cause for me. I'm not sure why it happened in this situation because I regularly run VS as administrator on my primary development environment and have not experienced this problem before. But for some reason today the above scenario caused any files generated by VS during that session to be un-editable...you can read them, but not change or delete them and that is exactly what Git is going to do when you switch branches.

To resolve the problem for Git I had to start windows explorer as administrator and take ownership and re give myself permissions to files and directories in question. I don't fully understand why this as I was running explorer as Administrator too but it did.

You can do this for the files individually but I ended up doing this process for the root folder of the branch.

So the exact steps I did to fix the problem are: Went to the top of the branch in windows explorer, right clicked properties of the directory, select the security tab, advanced options which opens the Advanced Security Settings dialog, Selected change ownership at the top (it might show you already own it), I re-selected myself. Then it returns you to the 'Advanced Security Settings' dialog, at the bottom of remember to check the box 'Replace all object...' Then click apply The system cycles through each file and folder fixing ownership and that resolved the problem for me.

For me it had locked out my migrations folder and wouldn't let me switch branches...so I originally just fixed that directory and sub tree which allowed me to switch branches but I had closed VS trying to resolved the issue. When I reopened VS I did not run VS as the Administrator and I found that could not compile the solution now! It was the same\similar issue. It could not compile the solution as all of the obj directories were now non editable... so that is when I did the above steps and all was good again.

Hope this helps someone... ;)

I solved this problem by restarting PHPStorm (insert your programm instead) as administrator

If you're using Docker and running Windows 10, you may want to stop the container(s) where the file may be running at. To show the statuses of your containers, run

docker ps -a

To stop them, simply run

docker stop <container name or container id>

This worked for me as I am running my local files using a .sh file

I tried every single tip on this page and nothing helped. I was doing a git fetch and a git reset --hard origin/development gave me the unkink error. I couldn't reset to the latest commit.

What helped was checking out another branch and then checking out the previous branch. Very strange but it solved the problem.

As i am using gitkraken and command prompt, i ran into the same issue. And then i run git gc command it resolved my problem. So i am happy and want share some of the points which might be helpful.

What git gc will do ?

git gc removing unreachable objects which may have been created from prior invocations of git add.

When to run git gc?

From doc, users are encouraged to run this task on a regular basis within each repository to maintain good disk space utilization and good operating performance.

How to make it auto-configurable?

Some git commands may automatically run git gc; see the --auto flag below for details. If you know what you’re doing and all you want is to disable this behavior permanently without further considerations, just do

git config --global gc.auto 0

As mentioned in the above answers, yes file must be used maybe by other java processes, simple way to get rid-off this is, just kill all java processes then execute git pull I did this, it works for me.

For windows kill all java processes:

taskkill /F /IM java.exe

For Linux kill all java processes:

kill -9 `pidof java`

I ran into this issue running git Bash and Eclipse EGit at the same time. Solution: close Eclipse. Also wouldn't hurt to run git gc as @khilo mentioned.

If closing your IDE and running various git commands listed here won't help, try manually killing all running Java processes. I had a Java process probably left over from eclipse that somehow kept a configuration file open.

In my case (Win8.1, TortoiseGit running), it was the process called "TortoiseSVN status cache" that was locking the file.

Killing it allowed me to run "git gc" without any more problems. The above process is fired up by TortoiseGit, so there is no need to manually restart it.

After run command

git rm -rf foo.bar

I see error

Unlink of file 'foo.bar' failed. Should I try again? (y/n)

Because another program is using this file. For example, when I run Java web application in debug model or run web application on server, I can't delete log file. Turn off application sever (or turn off debug process), re-try

git rm -rf foo.bar

I see file has been deleted.

I was able to solve this by opening Powershell as Administrator and from there git checkout <branch_name>

If you are developing a web application, a common reason is to forget shutting down the server. For example this could be a simple Node.js process, or on windows your IIS process running more unobtrusive as background process.

I had this issue with .tmp files in /.git/objects/pack folder. I think something had failed during a push or pull, so I removed these temporary files and reset the HEAD to my last commit. Not sure if this is advised but it worked for me. Also git count-objects -v gave me a list of the .tmp files that didn't belong in the pack folder.

Or to suppress the y/n messages in windows git open cmd.exe and run:

SETX GIT_ASK_YESNO false

seen here: https://twitter.com/petercamfield/status/494805475733807104

For my Spring Boot project I ran into this errror when attempting to run git stash.

The solution was to killed all of the Java processes running on my machine.

After trying various solutions finally git clean -f helped me.

EDIT: I hit the problem again few times - closing all processes dependent on git seems to help (like gitbash, Eclipse IDE, etc.)

I had this kind of issue on Windows 7 and it turned out to be due to some orphaned git.exe process.

To solve it, open Task Manager and kill all git.exe processes.

Since git commands are short-lived, you should normally never see any git.exe in Task Manager. When they are there, it usually means something is wrong, and you should kill those processes.

I tried git gc and it resolved my problem.

in my case there was a copy or replace window for that particular file open and hence the unlink error. i closed it and there is no unlink error

This may be a separate gitk window running to see some git history.

Just close that window to fix that problem.

I had this issue and solved it by the command : git gc The above command remove temp and unnecessary files. (Garbage collector.)

I had the same issue while doing a git pull and as stated above, it was because of a program that was holding those files and was not allowing a git pull. Closing the program helped. Usually, the IDE (like Eclipse) from where the files are being checked-in will be holding it in the background. Closing the same and re-running git pull solved the problem for me.

After none of the above answers seemed to work, running git fetch -p did the job for me.

https://git-scm.com/docs/git-fetch

I encountered this issue while doing a git pull.

I tried git gc and it resolved my problem.

I had this same error and closing the app which had the file open solved it. I was able to go back and press "Y"

I ran into this issue in Windows, you might want to run the git bash as an administrator and then perform the desire commands, that solved the issue for me.

On Windows 8: I ran git gc and it said git gc was already running, I ran git gc --force and the garbage collector ran.

I could then switch branches and merge without any issues, try git gc --force.

Perhaps the gc process didn't stop gracefully for one reason or another.

I faced same issue while doing 'git pull'. I tried manual housekeeping git command 'git gc' and it resolved my problem.

As stated above, something else is holding the files. Thing is that program doesnt look suspicious for us. I was trying to do a git pull from console, while having GitKraken opened. Closing GitKraken fixed the problem.

In my case there are no processes touching the file or directory. Maybe it happens if the path is very long, because an operating system restriction (windows). Try enabling the longpath support flag in the global git configuration as indicated below:

git config --global core.longpaths true

or try to setting the yes/no answer flag if it is not conflictive for you

set GIT_ASK_YESNO=false

If the path is too long, I've not found a successful solution.