Reset local repository branch to be just like remote repository HEAD

Question

How do I reset my local branch to be just like the branch on the remote repository   I did   git reset --hard HEAD   But when I run a git status   On branch master Changes to be committed     use  git reset HEAD  lt file gt      to unstage        modified    java com mycompany TestContacts java       modified    java com mycompany TestParser java   Can you please tell me why I have these  modified   I haven t touched these files  If I did  I want to remove those

User · Answer

Previous answers assume that the branch to be reset is the current branch (checked out). In comments, OP hap497 clarified that the branch is indeed checked out, but this is not explicitly required by the original question. Since there is at least one "duplicate" question, Reset branch completely to repository state, which does not assume that the branch is checked out, here's an alternative:

If branch "mybranch" is not currently checked out, to reset it to remote branch "myremote/mybranch"'s head, you can use this low-level command:

git update-ref refs/heads/mybranch myremote/mybranch

This method leaves the checked out branch as it is, and the working tree untouched. It simply moves mybranch's head to another commit, whatever is given as the second argument. This is especially helpful if multiple branches need to be updated to new remote heads.

Use caution when doing this, though, and use gitk or a similar tool to double check source and destination. If you accidentally do this on the current branch (and git will not keep you from this), you may become confused, because the new branch content does not match the working tree, which did not change (to fix, update the branch again, to where it was before).

User · Answer

The answer  git clean -d -f   was underrated  -d to remove directories   Thanks

User · Answer

If you don t mind saving your local changes  yet still want to update your repository to match origin HEAD  you can simply stash your local changes and then pull   git stash git pull

User · Answer

No amount of reset and cleaning seemed to have any effect on untracked and modified files in my local git repo  I tried all the options above   My only solution to this was to rm the local repo and re-clone it from the remote   Fortunately I didn t have any other branches I cared about   xkcd  Git

User · Answer

Provided that the remote repository is origin  and that you re interested in branch name   git fetch origin git reset --hard origin  lt branch name gt    Also  you go for reset the current branch of origin to HEAD   git fetch origin git reset --hard origin HEAD   How it works   git fetch origin downloads the latest from remote without trying to merge or rebase anything   Then the git reset resets the  lt branch name gt  branch to what you just fetched  The --hard option changes all the files in your working tree to match the files in origin branch name

User · Answer

I needed to do  the solution in the accepted answer    git fetch origin git reset --hard origin master   Followed by   git clean -f   to remove local files  To see what files will be removed  without actually removing them    git clean -n -f

User · Answer

This is what I use often   git fetch upstream develop  git reset --hard upstream develop  git clean -d --force    Note that it is good practice not to make changes to your local master develop branch  but instead checkout to another branch for any change  with the branch name prepended by the type of change  e g  feat   chore   fix   etc  Thus you only need to pull changes  not push any changes from master  Same thing for other branches that others contribute to  So the above should only be used if you have happened to commit changes to a branch that others have committed to  and need to reset  Otherwise in future avoid pushing to a branch that others push to  instead checkout and push to the said branch via the checked out branch   If you want to reset your local branch to the latest commit in the upstream branch  what works for me so far is   Check your remotes  make sure your upstream and origin are what you expect  if not as expected then use git remote add upstream  lt insert URL gt   e g  of the original GitHub repo that you forked from  and or git remote add origin  lt insert URL of the forked GitHub repo gt    git remote --verbose  git checkout develop  git commit -m  Saving work    git branch saved-work  git fetch upstream develop  git reset --hard upstream develop  git clean -d --force   On GitHub  you can also checkout the branch with the same name as the local one  in order to save the work there  although this isn t necessary if origin develop has the same changes as the local saved-work branch  I m using the develop branch as an example  but it can be any existing branch name   git add   git commit -m  Reset to upstream develop  git push --force origin develop   Then if you need to merge these changes with another branch while where there are any conflicts  preserving the changes in develop  use   git merge -s recursive -X theirs develop   While use  git merge -s recursive -X ours develop   to preserve branch name s conflicting changes  Otherwise use a mergetool with git mergetool   With all the changes together   git commit -m  Saving work    git branch saved-work  git checkout develop  git fetch upstream develop  git reset --hard upstream develop  git clean -d --force  git add    git commit -m  Reset to upstream develop   git push --force origin develop  git checkout branch name  git merge develop    Note that instead of upstream develop you could use a commit hash  other branch name  etc  Use a CLI tool such as Oh My Zsh to check that your branch is green indicating that there is nothing to commit and the working directory is clean  which is confirmed or also verifiable by git status   Note that this may actually add commits compared to upstream develop if there is anything automatically added by a commit  e g  UML diagrams  license headers  etc   so in that case  you could then pull the changes on origin develop to upstream develop  if needed

User · Answer

Use the commands below  These commands will remove all untracked files from local git too  git fetch origin git reset --hard origin master git clean -d -f

User · Answer

Setting your branch to exactly match the remote branch can be done in two steps  git fetch origin git reset --hard origin master  Update  2020  if you have main branch instead of master in remote repo  git fetch origin git reset --hard origin main   If you want to save your current branch s state before doing this  just in case   you can do  git commit -a -m  quot Saving my work  just in case quot  git branch my-saved-work  Now your work is saved on the branch  quot my-saved-work quot  in case you decide you want it back  or want to look at it later or diff it against your updated branch   Note that the first example assumes that the remote repo s name is  quot origin quot  and that the branch named  quot master quot  in the remote repo matches the currently checked-out branch in your local repo  BTW  this situation that you re in looks an awful lot like a common case where a push has been done into the currently checked out branch of a non-bare repository  Did you recently push into your local repo  If not  then no worries -- something else must have caused these files to unexpectedly end up modified  Otherwise  you should be aware that it s not recommended to push into a non-bare repository  and not into the currently checked-out branch  in particular

User · Answer

This is something I face regularly   amp  I ve generalised the script Wolfgang provided above to work with any branch  I also added an  are you sure  prompt   amp  some feedback output     bin bash   reset the current repository   WF 2012-10-15   AT 2012-11-09   see http   stackoverflow com questions 1628088 how-to-reset-my-local-repository-to-be-just-like-the-remote-repository-head timestamp  date    Y- m- d- H  M  S   branchname  git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name --abbrev-ref HEAD  read -p  Reset branch  branchname to origin  y n         REPLY      y        echo  about to auto-commit any changes  git commit -a -m  auto commit at  timestamp  if      -eq 0   then   echo  Creating backup auto-save branch  auto-save- branchname-at- timestamp    git branch  auto-save- branchname-at- timestamp   fi echo  now resetting to origin  branchname  git fetch origin git reset --hard origin  branchname

User · Answer

Only 3 commands will make it work  git fetch origin git reset --hard origin HEAD git clean -f

User · Answer

git reset --hard HEAD actually only resets to the last committed state  In this case HEAD refers to the HEAD of your branch    If you have several commits  this won t work    What you probably want to do  is reset to the head of origin or whatever you remote repository is called  I d probably just do something like   git reset --hard origin HEAD   Be careful though  Hard resets cannot easily be undone  It is better to do as Dan suggests  and branch off a copy of your changes before resetting

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All of the above suggests are right  but often to really reset your project  you also need to remove even files that are in your  gitignore   To get the moral equivalent of erasing your project directory and re-cloning from the remote is   git fetch git reset --hard git clean -x -d -f   Warning  git clean -x -d -f is irreversible and you may lose files and data  e g  things you have ignored using  gitignore

User · Answer

I did   git branch -D master git checkout master   to totally reset branch    note  you should checkout to another branch to be able to delete required branch

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The only solution that works in all cases that I ve seen is to delete and reclone  Maybe there s another way  but obviously this way leaves no chance of old state being left there  so I prefer it  Bash one-liner you can set as a macro if you often mess things up in git   REPO PATH   pwd   amp  amp  GIT URL   git config --get remote origin url   amp  amp  cd     amp  amp  rm -rf  REPO PATH  amp  amp  git clone --recursive  GIT URL  REPO PATH  amp  amp  cd  REPO PATH     assumes your  git files aren t corrupt

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Have you forgotten to create a feature-branch and have committed directly on master by mistake    You can create the feature branch now and set master back without affecting the worktree  local filesystem  to avoid triggering builds  tests and trouble with file-locks   git checkout -b feature-branch git branch -f master origin master

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Here is a script that automates what the most popular answer suggests     See https   stackoverflow com a 13308579 1497139 for an improved version that supports branches     bin bash   reset the current repository   WF 2012-10-15   see https   stackoverflow com questions 1628088 how-to-reset-my-local-repository-to-be-just-like-the-remote-repository-head timestamp  date    Y- m- d- H  M  S   git commit -a -m  auto commit at  timestamp  if      -eq 0   then   git branch  auto-save-at- timestamp   fi git fetch origin git reset --hard origin master

User · Answer

First  use git reset to reset to the previously fetched HEAD of the corresponding upstream branch  git reset --hard   u   The advantage of specifying   u  or its verbose form   upstream  is that the name of the remote repo and branch don t have to be explicitly specified  On Windows or with PowerShell  specify  quot   u  quot   with double quotes   Next  as needed  use git clean to remove untracked files  optionally also with -x  git clean -df  Finally  as needed  get the latest changes  git pull

User · Answer

The question mixes two issues here    how to reset a local branch to the point where the remote is how to clear your staging area  and possibly the working directory   so that git status says nothing to commit  working directory clean    The one-stop-answer is    git fetch --prune  optional  Updates the local snapshot of the remote repo  Further commands are local only  git reset --hard   upstream Puts the local branch pointer to where the snapshot of the remote is  as well as set the index and the working directory to the files of that commit  git clean -d --force Removes untracked files and directories which hinder git to say    working directory clean

User · Answer

If you had a problem as me  that you have already committed some changes  but now  for any reason you want to get rid of it  the quickest way is to use git reset like this   git reset --hard HEAD 2   I had 2 not needed commits  hence the number 2  You can change it to your own number of commits to reset   So answering your question - if you re 5 commits ahead of remote repository HEAD  you should run this command   git reset --hard HEAD 5   Notice that you will lose the changes you ve made  so be careful

User · Answer

If you want to go back to the HEAD state for both the working directory and the index  then you should git reset --hard HEAD  rather than to HEAD    This may have been a typo  just like the single versus double dash for --hard    As for your specific question as to why those files appear in the status as modified  it looks like perhaps you did a soft reset instead of a hard reset   This will cause the files that were changed in the HEAD commit to appear as if they were staged  which is likely what you are seeing here

[git] Reset local repository branch to be just like remote repository HEAD

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