How do I force git pull to overwrite local files

Question

How do I force an overwrite of local files on a git pull   The scenario is the following    A team member is modifying the templates for a website we are working on They are adding some images to the images directory  but forgets to add them under source control  They are sending the images by mail  later  to me I m adding the images under the source control and pushing them to GitHub together with other changes They cannot pull updates from GitHub because Git doesn t want to overwrite their files    This is the error I m getting      error  Untracked working tree file  public images icon gif  would be overwritten by merge   How do I force Git to overwrite them  The person is a designer - usually  I resolve all the conflicts by hand  so the server has the most recent version that they just need to update on their computer

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I did this to get it to work   On computer where I created the new branch   git push --all   On computer where I wanted the new branch to show   git fetch --all

User · Answer

1  Reset to a previous commit  git reset --hard HEAD   2  Delete Untracked Files  git clean -f   3  Pull the commits  git pull   Sources    https   git-scm com docs git-reset https   git-scm com docs git-clean

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I used this command to get rid of the local files preventing me from doing a pull merge  But be careful  Run git merge     first to see whether there are only those files you really want to remove   git merge origin master 2 gt  amp 1  gt  dev null   grep     space      sed s     space     g   xargs -L1 rm    git merge lists among other things all those files  They are prepended by some white-space  2 gt  amp 1  gt  dev null redirects the error output to the standard one so it is picked up by grep  grep     space    filters only the lines with file names  sed s     space     g trims the white-space from the beginning  xargs -L1 rm calls rm on each of those files  deleting them    Handle with care  Whatever git merge outputs  the rm will be called for every line beginning with a white-space

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I know of a much easier and less painful method     git branch -m  branch to force pull  tmp   git fetch   git checkout  branch to force pull    git branch -D tmp   That s it

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Instead of doing   git fetch --all git reset --hard origin master   I d advise doing the following   git fetch origin master git reset --hard origin master   No need to fetch all remotes and branches if you re going to reset to the origin master branch right

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These four commands work for me   git reset --hard HEAD git checkout origin master git branch -D master git checkout -b master   To check pull after executing these commands  git pull origin master   I tried a lot but finally got success with these commands

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WARNING  git clean deletes all your untracked files directories and can t be undone     Sometimes just clean -f does not help  In case you have untracked DIRECTORIES  -d option also needed     WARNING  this can t be undone   git reset --hard HEAD git clean -f -d git pull   WARNING  git clean deletes all your untracked files directories and can t be undone   Consider using -n  --dry-run  flag first  This will show you what will be deleted without actually deleting anything   git clean -n -f -d   Example output   Would remove untracked-file-1 txt Would remove untracked-file-2 txt Would remove untracked folder

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It seems like most answers here are focused on the master branch  however  there are times when I m working on the same feature branch in two different places and I want a rebase in one to be reflected in the other without a lot of jumping through hoops   Based on a combination of RNA s answer and torek s answer to a similar question  I ve come up with this which works splendidly   git fetch git reset --hard   u    Run this from a branch and it ll only reset your local branch to the upstream version   This can be nicely put into a git alias  git forcepull  as well   git config alias forcepull   git fetch   git reset --hard   u    Or  in your  gitconfig file    alias    forcepull     git fetch   git reset --hard   u     Enjoy

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It looks like the best way is to first do   git clean   To delete all untracked files and then continue with the usual git pull

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I had the same problem  No one gave me this solution  but it worked for me   I solved it by    Delete all the files  Leave just the  git directory  git reset --hard HEAD git pull git push   Now it works

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Warning  doing this will permanently delete your files if you have any directory   entries in your gitignore file   Some answers seem to be terrible  Terrible in the sense of what happened to  Lauri by following David Avsajanishvili suggestion   Rather  git   v1 7 6    git stash --include-untracked git pull   Later you can clean the stash history   Manually  one-by-one     git stash list stash  0   WIP on  lt branch gt       stash  1   WIP on  lt branch gt          git stash drop stash  0    git stash drop stash  1    Brutally  all-at-once     git stash clear   Of course if you want to go back to what you stashed     git stash list       git stash apply stash  5

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Requirements    Track local changes so no-one here ever loses them  Make the local repository match the remote origin repository    Solution    Stash the local changes  Fetch with a clean of files and directories ignoring  gitignore and hard reset to origin   git stash --include-untracked git fetch --all git clean -fdx git reset --hard origin master

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Bonus  In speaking of pull fetch merge in the previous answers  I would like to share an interesting and productive trick  git pull --rebase This above command is the most useful command in my Git life which saved a lot of time  Before pushing your newly commit to server  try this command and it will automatically synchronise the latest server changes  with a fetch   merge  and will place your commit at the top in the Git log  There isn t any need to worry about manual pull merge  Find details in What does  quot git pull --rebase quot  do

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You might find this command helpful to throw away local changes   git checkout  lt your-branch gt  -f   And then do a cleanup  removes untracked files from the working tree    git clean -f   If you want to remove untracked directories in addition to untracked files   git clean -fd

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This worked for me very well  git fetch --all git reset --hard origin master

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I think you can also force by git push -f   git push --force

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Like Hedgehog I think the answers are terrible  But though Hedgehog s answer might be better  I don t think it is as elegant as it could be   The way I found to do this is by using fetch and merge with a defined strategy  Which should make it so that your local changes are preserved as long as they are not one of the files that you are trying to force an overwrite with  First do a commit of your changes  git add    git commit -a -m  quot local file server commit message quot   Then fetch the changes and overwrite if there is a conflict  git fetch origin master  git merge -s recursive -X theirs origin master  -X is an option name  and theirs is the value for that option  You re choosing to use their changes  the other option is ours changes  if there is a conflict

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An easier way would be to   git checkout --theirs  path to file extension git pull origin master   This will override your local file with the file on git

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I summarized other answers  You can execute git pull without errors   git fetch --all git reset --hard origin master git reset --hard HEAD git clean -f -d git pull   Warning  This script is very powerful  so you could lose your changes

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Despite the original question  the top answers can cause problems for people who have a similar problem  but don t want to lose their local files  For example  see Al-Punk and crizCraig s comments    The following version commits your local changes to a temporary branch  tmp   checks out the original branch  which I m assuming is master  and merges the updates  You could do this with stash  but I ve found it s usually easier to simply use the branch   merge approach   git checkout -b tmp git add    git commit -am  my temporary files  git checkout master  git fetch origin master git merge -s recursive -X theirs origin master   where we assume the other repository is origin master

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if you want to reset to the remote tracking branch in a generic way use   git fetch git reset --keep origin   git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD    if you want to reset your local changes too   git fetch git reset --hard origin   git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD

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Once you do git pull  you will get list of files that are not matching  If the number of files is not very large then you can checkout those files  this action will overwrite those files  git checkout --  lt filename gt  I usually do it if for quick check I modify local files on server  no recommended and probabaly reason behind you getting this issue  D    I checkout the changed files after finding solution

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This is the best practice for reverting changes    git commit Commit your staged changes so they will be saved in the reflog   see below   git fetch Fetch the latest upstream changes git reset --hard origin master Hard reset to the origin master branch   The reflog records branches and other references being updated in the local repository  Or simply put - the reflog is the history of your changes   So it s always a great practice to commit  Commits are appended to the reflog which ensures you will always have a way to retrieve the deleted code

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I had the same problem and for some reason  even a git clean -f -d would not do it  Here is why  For some reason  if your file is ignored by Git  via a  gitignore entry  I assume   it still bothers about overwriting this with a later pull  but a clean will not remove it  unless you add -x

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Instead of merging with git pull  try this     git fetch --all  followed by   git reset --hard origin master

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you could try git pull --force or maybe stash your commits by using git stash then running git pull

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I have a strange situation that neither git clean or git reset works  I have to remove the conflicting file from git index by using the following script on every untracked file   git rm  file    Then I am able to pull just fine

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The only thing that worked for me was   git reset --hard HEAD 5   This will take you back five commits and then with  git pull   I found that by looking up how to undo a Git merge

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I was trying to use the Material2 branch on the Angular2-Webpack-Starter and had a heck of a time  This was the only way I could download and use that branch   git clone --depth 1 https   github com angularclass angular2-webpack-starter git  cd angular2-webpack-starter   git checkout -b material2   Open the project folder and delete all non-hidden files and folders  Leave all the hidden ones   git add    git commit -m  pokemon go   git reset --hard  git pull origin material2    When the editor pops up  hit   wq   and then press Enter   Now you are ready

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Try this   git reset --hard HEAD git pull   It should do what you want

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You could ignore that file with a file in your project base folder    gitignore  public images     Then pull the changes and then remove that line from your gitignore file

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I just solved this myself by   git checkout -b tmp    tmp  or pick a better name for your local changes branch git add -A git commit -m  tmp  git pull git checkout master   Or whatever branch you were on originally git pull git diff tmp   where the last command gives a list of what your local changes were  Keep modifying the  tmp  branch until it is acceptable and then merge back onto master with    git checkout master  amp  amp  git merge tmp   For next time  you can probably handle this in a cleaner way by looking up  git stash branch  though stash is likely to cause you trouble on the first few tries  so do first experiment on a non-critical project

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On Windows  do this single command   git fetch --all  amp  git reset --hard origin master

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First of all  try the standard way   git reset HEAD --hard   To remove all not committed changes  git clean -fd           To remove all untracked  non-git  files and folders    Warning  Above commands can results in data files loss only if you don t have them committed  If you re not sure  make the backup first of your whole repository folder   Then pull it again   If above won t help and you don t care about your untracked files directories  make the backup first just in case   try the following simple steps   cd your git repo    where  your git repo  is your git repository folder rm -rfv             WARNING  only run inside your git repository  git pull            pull the sources again   This will REMOVE all git files  excempt  git  dir  where you have all commits  and pull it again     Why git reset HEAD --hard could fail in some cases    Custom rules in  gitattributes file  Having eol lf rule in  gitattributes could cause git to modify some file changes by converting CRLF line-endings into LF in some text files   If that s the case  you ve to commit these CRLF LF changes  by reviewing them in git status   or try  git config core autcrlf false to temporary ignore them  File system incompability  When you re using file-system which doesn t support permission attributes  In example you have two repositories  one on Linux Mac  ext3 hfs   and another one on FAT32 NTFS based file-system   As you notice  there are two different kind of file systems  so the one which doesn t support Unix permissions basically can t reset file permissions on system which doesn t support that kind of permissions  so no matter how --hard you try  git always detect some  changes

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Step 1   optional  From the root of your local repository  save a backup and empty the current folder  mkdir -p     lt branch gt -bkp  amp  amp  mv --backup t       lt branch gt -bkp  Step 2  Download all files and folders of the branch from the remote repository  git checkout  lt branch gt   amp  amp  git add -A    amp  amp  git reset --hard origin  lt branch gt   amp  amp  git pull  where you should replace  lt branch gt  with the name of the branch you want to overwrite  Comments   You may prefer to manually backup and remove the current files and folders instead of step 1  In fact  I recommend doing this with a file-handler in the GUI of your operating system  If you skip step 1  beware  you will lose all work in the local repository  Important  if you leave out git pull in step 2  you risk not getting the latest version from the remote repository  According to the second reference below  git reset --hard will reset the staging area and the working directory to match the most recent commit  My experience contradicts this claim  If you run git reset --hard origin  lt branch to overwrite gt  without first deleting all files and folders from your local repository  beware that any junk files still laying around may sneak into the remote repository at a later git push even if that was not your intention  The extra git add -A   in step 2 prevents this from happening if you choose to leave out step 1   References  https   gitforwindows org  https   www atlassian com git tutorials undoing-changes git-reset https   www atlassian com git tutorials rewriting-history git-reflog

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As I often need a fast way to reset current branch on windows through command prompt  here s a fast way   for  f  tokens 1  delims     a in   git branch  findstr  b       do  git reset --hard origin  b

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Based on my own similar experiences  the solution offered by Strahinja Kustudic above is by far the best   As others have pointed out  simply doing hard reset will remove all the untracked files which could include lots of things that you don t want removed  such as config files   What is safer  is to remove only the files that are about to be added  and for that matter  you d likely also want to checkout any locally-modified files that are about to be updated   That in mind  I updated Kustudic s script to do just that   I also fixed a typo  a missing   in the original      bin sh    Fetch the newest code git fetch    Delete all files which are being added    so there are no conflicts with untracked files for file in  git diff HEAD  origin master --name-status   awk    A   print  2    do     echo  Deleting untracked file  file         rm -vf   file  done    Checkout all files which have been locally modified for file in  git diff HEAD  origin master --name-status   awk    M   print  2    do     echo  Checking out modified file  file         git checkout  file done    Finally merge all the changes  you could use merge here as well  git pull

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I believe there are two possible causes of conflict  which must be solved separately  and as far as I can tell none of the above answers deals with both    Local files that are untracked need to be deleted  either manually  safer  or as suggested in other answers  by git clean -f -d Local commits that are not on the remote branch need to be deleted as well  IMO the easiest way to achieve this is with  git reset --hard origin master  replace  master  by whatever branch you are working on  and run a git fetch origin first

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I had a similar problem   I had to do this   git reset --hard HEAD git clean -f git pull

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Important  If you have any local changes  they will be lost  With or without --hard option  any local commits that haven t been pushed will be lost     If you have any files that are not tracked by Git  e g  uploaded user content   these files will not be affected   First  run a fetch to update all origin  lt branch gt  refs to latest  git fetch --all  Backup your current branch  git checkout -b backup-master  Then  you have two options  git reset --hard origin master  OR If you are on some other branch  git reset --hard origin  lt branch name gt   Explanation  git fetch downloads the latest from remote without trying to merge or rebase anything  Then the git reset resets the master branch to what you just fetched  The --hard option changes all the files in your working tree to match the files in origin master  Maintain current local commits      It s worth noting that it is possible to maintain current local commits by creating a branch from master before resetting  git checkout master git branch new-branch-to-save-current-commits git fetch --all git reset --hard origin master  After this  all of the old commits will be kept in new-branch-to-save-current-commits  Uncommitted changes Uncommitted changes  however  even staged   will be lost  Make sure to stash and commit anything you need  For that you can run the following  git stash  And then to reapply these uncommitted changes  git stash pop

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The problem with all these solutions is that they are all either too complex  or  an even bigger problem  is that they remove all untracked files from the web server  which we don t want since there are always needed configuration files which are on the server and not in the Git repository   Here is the cleanest solution which we are using     Fetch the newest code git fetch    Delete all files which are being added  so there   are no conflicts with untracked files for file in  git diff HEAD  origin master --name-status   awk    A   print  2    do     rm -f --   file  done    Checkout all files which were locally modified for file in  git diff --name-status   awk     CDMRTUX    print  2    do     git checkout --   file  done    Finally pull all the changes    you could merge as well e g   merge origin master   git pull    The first command fetches newest data  The second command checks if there are any files which are being added to the repository and deletes those untracked files from the local repository which would cause conflicts  The third command checks-out all the files which were locally modified  Finally we do a pull to update to the newest version  but this time without any conflicts  since untracked files which are in the repo don t exist anymore and all the locally modified files are already the same as in the repository

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Just do  git fetch origin branchname git checkout -f origin branchname    This will overwrite ONLY new included files git checkout branchname git merge origin branchname   So you avoid all unwanted side effects  like deleting files or directories you wanted to keep  etc

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Despite the fact that this question has already many answers  the original question is to solve this question  error  Untracked working tree file  public images icon gif  would be overwritten by merge  As binary files can t be merged a simple answer is git checkout public images icon gif  With that the file will recover the previous state it had in this branch  I usually do git stash if I don t want to lose my changes or something like git checkout   if I don t care about locally modified files  IMO much more simple than reset --hard  clean    and all this stuff more suited to leave the branch as in remote  including commits  untracked files  rather than just solving a locally modified file

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I   ve tried most of what I could find here  none worked in my case  What worked was git merge -X theirs

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Don t use git reset --hard  That will wipe their changes which may well be completely undesirable  Instead   git pull git reset origin master git checkout  lt file1 gt   lt file2 gt        You can of course use git fetch instead of git pull since it clearly isn t going to merge  but if you usually pull it makes sense to continue to pull here   So what happens here is that git pull updates your origin master reference  git reset updates your local branch reference on to be the same as origin master without updating any files  so your checked-out state is unchanged  then git checkout reverts files to your local branch index state as needed  In cases where exactly the same file has been added on live and on upstream master  the index already matches the file following the reset  so in the common case you don t need to do git checkout at all   If the upstream branch also contains commits which you want to apply automatically  you can follow a subtle variation on the process   git pull git merge  lt commit before problem commit gt  git reset  lt problem commit gt  git checkout  lt file1 gt   lt file2 gt      git pull

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I read through all the answers but I was looking for a single command to do this  Here is what I did  Added a git alias to  gitconfig   alias        fp     f    git fetch   1    2   amp  amp  git reset --hard   1    2    f    Run your command as   git fp origin master   equivalent to  git fetch origin master git reset --hard origin master

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You can try    git fetch --all   git reset --hard origin master    git pull

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git fetch --all   then if you are on the master branch  git reset --hard origin master   else  git reset --hard origin master lt branch name gt

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Reset the index and the head to origin master  but do not reset the working tree   git reset origin master

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git fetch --all  amp  amp  git reset --hard origin master  amp  amp  git pull

[git] How do I force "git pull" to overwrite local files?

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