[git] git: Switch branch and ignore any changes without committing

Easy Answer:

is to force checkout a branch

git checkout -f <branch_name>

Force checking out a branch is telling git to drop all changes you've made in the current branch, and checkout out the desired one.

or in case you're checking out a commit

git checkout -f <commit-hash>


"thought that I could change branches without committing. If so, how can I set this up? If not, how do I get out of this problem?"

The answer to that is No, that's literally the philosophy of Git that you keep track of all changes, and that each node (i.e. commit) has to be up-to-date with the latest changes you've made, unless you've made a new commit of course.


You decided to keep changes?

Then stash them using

git stash

and then to unstash your changes in the desired branch, use

git stash apply

which will apply you changes but keep them in the stash queue too. If you don't want to keep them in the stash stack, then pop them using

git stash pop

That's the equivalent of apply and then drop

Examples related to git

Does the target directory for a git clone have to match the repo name? Git fatal: protocol 'https' is not supported Git is not working after macOS Update (xcrun: error: invalid active developer path (/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools) git clone: Authentication failed for <URL> destination path already exists and is not an empty directory SSL_connect: SSL_ERROR_SYSCALL in connection to github.com:443 GitLab remote: HTTP Basic: Access denied and fatal Authentication How can I switch to another branch in git? VS 2017 Git Local Commit DB.lock error on every commit How to remove an unpushed outgoing commit in Visual Studio?

Examples related to branch

Get git branch name in Jenkins Pipeline/Jenkinsfile Why do I have to "git push --set-upstream origin <branch>"? Your configuration specifies to merge with the <branch name> from the remote, but no such ref was fetched.? When does Git refresh the list of remote branches? Fix GitLab error: "you are not allowed to push code to protected branches on this project"? Git push: "fatal 'origin' does not appear to be a git repository - fatal Could not read from remote repository." Git: Merge a Remote branch locally git pull from master into the development branch Depend on a branch or tag using a git URL in a package.json? How can I copy the content of a branch to a new local branch?

Examples related to git-checkout

How can I switch to another branch in git? Git checkout - switching back to HEAD What is git tag, How to create tags & How to checkout git remote tag(s) How can I move HEAD back to a previous location? (Detached head) & Undo commits error: pathspec 'test-branch' did not match any file(s) known to git git checkout all the files How can I check out a GitHub pull request with git? "Cannot update paths and switch to branch at the same time" error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by checkout Git command to checkout any branch and overwrite local changes