How do I discard changes in my working copy that are not in the index?
This question is related to
git
version-control
cd path_to_project_folder # take you to your project folder/working directory
git checkout . # removes all unstaged changes in working directory
This checks out the current index for the current directory, throwing away all changes in files from the current directory downwards.
git checkout .
or this which checks out all files from the index, overwriting working tree files.
git checkout-index -a -f
Just use:
git stash -k -u
This will stash unstaged changes and untracked files (new files) and keep staged files.
It's better than reset/checkout/clean, because you might want them back later (by git stash pop). Keeping them in the stash is better than discarding them.
If all the staged files were actually committed, then the branch can simply be reset e.g. from your GUI with about three mouse clicks: Branch, Reset, Yes!
So what I often do in practice to revert unwanted local changes is to commit all the good stuff, and then reset the branch.
If the good stuff is committed in a single commit, then you can use "amend last commit" to bring it back to being staged or unstaged if you'd ultimately like to commit it a little differently.
This might not be the technical solution you are looking for to your problem, but I find it a very practical solution. It allows you to discard unstaged changes selectively, resetting the changes you don't like and keeping the ones you do.
So in summary, I simply do commit, branch reset, and amend last commit.
You can use git stash - if something goes wrong, you can still revert from the stash. Similar to some other answer here, but this one also removes all unstaged files and also all unstaged deletes:
git add .
git stash
if you check that everything is OK, throw the stash away:
git stash drop
The answer from Bilal Maqsood with git clean also worked for me, but with the stash I have more control - if I do sth accidentally, I can still get my changes back
UPDATE
I think there is 1 more change (don't know why this worked for me before):
git add . -A instead of git add .
without the -A the removed files will not be staged
In my opinion,
git clean -df
should do the trick. As per Git documentation on git clean
git-clean - Remove untracked files from the working tree
Description
Cleans the working tree by recursively removing files that are not under version control, starting from the current directory.
Normally, only files unknown to Git are removed, but if the -x option is specified, ignored files are also removed. This can, for example, be useful to remove all build products.
If any optional ... arguments are given, only those paths are affected.
Options
-d Remove untracked directories in addition to untracked files. If an untracked directory is managed by a different Git repository, it is not removed by default. Use -f option twice if you really want to remove such a directory.
-f --force If the Git configuration variable clean.requireForce is not set to false, git clean will refuse to run unless given -f, -n or -i.
No matter what state your repo is in you can always reset to any previous commit:
git reset --hard <commit hash>
This will discard all changes which were made after that commit.
As you type git status, (use "git checkout -- ..." to discard changes in working directory) is shown.
e.g. git checkout -- .
I really found this article helpful for explaining when to use what command: http://www.szakmeister.net/blog/2011/oct/12/reverting-changes-git/
There are a couple different cases:
If you haven't staged the file, then you use git checkout. Checkout "updates files in the working tree to match the version in the index". If the files have not been staged (aka added to the index)... this command will essentially revert the files to what your last commit was.
git checkout -- foo.txt
If you have staged the file, then use git reset. Reset changes the index to match a commit.
git reset -- foo.txt
I suspect that using git stash is a popular choice since it's a little less dangerous. You can always go back to it if you accidently blow too much away when using git reset. Reset is recursive by default.
Take a look at the article above for further advice.
My favorite is
git checkout -p
That lets you selectively revert chunks.
See also:
git add -p
Another way to get rid of new files that is more specific than git clean -df (it will allow you to get rid of some files not necessarily all), is to add the new files to the index first, then stash, then drop the stash.
This technique is useful when, for some reason, you can't easily delete all of the untracked files by some ordinary mechanism (like rm).
When you want to transfer a stash to someone else:
# add files
git add .
# diff all the changes to a file
git diff --staged > ~/mijn-fix.diff
# remove local changes
git reset && git checkout .
# (later you can re-apply the diff:)
git apply ~/mijn-fix.diff
[edit] as commented, it ís possible to name stashes. Well, use this if you want to share your stash ;)
simply say
git stash
It will remove all your local changes. You also can use later by saying
git stash apply
or git stash pop
The easiest way to do this is by using this command:
This command is used to discard changes in working directory -
git checkout -- .
https://git-scm.com/docs/git-checkout
In git command, stashing of untracked files is achieved by using:
git stash -u
Instead of discarding changes, I reset my remote to the origin. Note - this method is to completely restore your folder to that of the repo.
So I do this to make sure they don't sit there when I git reset (later - excludes gitignores on the Origin/branchname)
NOTE: If you want to keep files not yet tracked, but not in GITIGNORE you may wish to skip this step, as it will Wipe these untracked files not found on your remote repository (thanks @XtrmJosh).
git add --all
Then I
git fetch --all
Then I reset to origin
git reset --hard origin/branchname
That will put it back to square one. Just like RE-Cloning the branch, WHILE keeping all my gitignored files locally and in place.
Updated per user comment below: Variation to reset the to whatever current branch the user is on.
git reset --hard @{u}
Just as a reminder, newer versions of git has the restore command, which also is a suggestion when typing git status when you have changed files:
(use "git add ..." to update what will be committed)
(use "git restore ..." to discard changes in working directory)
So git 'restore' is the modern solution to this. It is always a good idea to read the suggestions from git after typing 'git status' :-)
None of the solutions work if you just changed the permissions of a file (this is on DOS/Windoze)
Mon 23/11/2015-15:16:34.80 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> git status
On branch SLF4J_1.5.3
Changes not staged for commit:
(use "git add ..." to update what will be committed)
(use "git checkout -- ..." to discard changes in working directory)
modified: .gitignore
modified: LICENSE.txt
modified: TODO.txt
modified: codeStyle.xml
modified: pom.xml
modified: version.pl
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")
Mon 23/11/2015-15:16:37.87 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> git diff
diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
diff --git a/TODO.txt b/TODO.txt
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
diff --git a/codeStyle.xml b/codeStyle.xml
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
diff --git a/version.pl b/version.pl
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
Mon 23/11/2015-15:16:45.22 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> git reset --hard HEAD
HEAD is now at 8fa8488 12133-CHIXMISSINGMESSAGES MALCOLMBOEKHOFF 20141223124940 Added .gitignore
Mon 23/11/2015-15:16:47.42 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> git clean -f
Mon 23/11/2015-15:16:53.49 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> git stash save -u
Saved working directory and index state WIP on SLF4J_1.5.3: 8fa8488 12133-CHIXMISSINGMESSAGES MALCOLMBOEKHOFF 20141223124940 Added .gitignore
HEAD is now at 8fa8488 12133-CHIXMISSINGMESSAGES MALCOLMBOEKHOFF 20141223124940 Added .gitignore
Mon 23/11/2015-15:17:00.40 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> git stash drop
Dropped refs/stash@{0} (cb4966e9b1e9c9d8daa79ab94edc0c1442a294dd)
Mon 23/11/2015-15:17:06.75 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> git stash drop
Dropped refs/stash@{0} (e6c49c470f433ce344e305c5b778e810625d0529)
Mon 23/11/2015-15:17:08.90 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> git stash drop
No stash found.
Mon 23/11/2015-15:17:15.21 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> git checkout -- .
Mon 23/11/2015-15:22:00.68 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> git checkout -f -- .
Mon 23/11/2015-15:22:04.53 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> git status
On branch SLF4J_1.5.3
Changes not staged for commit:
(use "git add ..." to update what will be committed)
(use "git checkout -- ..." to discard changes in working directory)
modified: .gitignore
modified: LICENSE.txt
modified: TODO.txt
modified: codeStyle.xml
modified: pom.xml
modified: version.pl
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")
Mon 23/11/2015-15:22:13.06 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> git diff
diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
diff --git a/TODO.txt b/TODO.txt
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
diff --git a/codeStyle.xml b/codeStyle.xml
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
diff --git a/version.pl b/version.pl
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
The only way to fix this is to manually reset the permissions on the changed files:
Mon 23/11/2015-15:25:43.79 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> git status -s | egrep "^ M" | cut -c4- | for /f "usebackq tokens=* delims=" %A in (`more`) do chmod 644 %~A Mon 23/11/2015-15:25:55.37 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> git status On branch SLF4J_1.5.3 nothing to commit, working directory clean Mon 23/11/2015-15:25:59.28 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> Mon 23/11/2015-15:26:31.12 C:\...\work\checkout\slf4j+> git diff
You can now discard unstaged changes in one tracked file with:
git restore <file>
and in all tracked files in the current directory (recursively) with:
git restore .
If you run the latter from the root of the repo, it will discard unstaged changes in all tracked files.
git restore was introduced in July 2019 and released in version 2.23 as part of a split of the git checkout command into git restore for files and git switch for branches.git checkout still behaves as it used to and the older answers remain perfectly valid.git status with unstaged changes in the working tree, this is now what Git suggests to use to discard them (instead of git checkout -- <file> as it used to prior to v2.23).git checkout -- ., this only discards changes in tracked files. So Mariusz Nowak's answer still applies and if you want to discard all unstaged changes, including untracked files, you could run, as he suggests, an additional git clean -df.You could create your own alias which describes how to do it in a descriptive way.
I use the next alias to discard changes.
discard = checkout --
Then you can use it as next to discard all changes:
discard .
Or just a file:
discard filename
Otherwise, if you want to discard all changes and also the untracked files, I use a mix of checkout and clean:
cleanout = !git clean -df && git checkout -- .
So the use is simple as next:
cleanout
Now is available in the next Github repo which contains a lot of aliases:
If it's almost impossible to rule out modifications of the files, have you considered ignoring them? If this statement is right and you wouldn't touch those files during your development, this command may be useful:
git update-index --assume-unchanged file_to_ignore
git clean -df
Cleans the working tree by recursively removing files that are not under version control, starting from the current directory.
-d: Remove untracked directories in addition to untracked files
-f: Force (might be not necessary depending on clean.requireForce setting)
Run git help clean to see the manual
Since no answer suggests the exact option combination that I use, here it is:
git clean -dxn . # dry-run to inspect the list of files-to-be-removed
git clean -dxf . # REMOVE ignored/untracked files (in the current directory)
git checkout -- . # ERASE changes in tracked files (in the current directory)
This is the online help text for the used git clean options:
-d
Remove untracked directories in addition to untracked files. If an untracked directory is managed by a different Git repository, it is not removed by default. Use -f option twice if you really want to remove such a directory.
-x
Don’t use the standard ignore rules read from .gitignore (per directory) and $GIT_DIR/info/exclude, but do still use the ignore rules given with -e options. This allows removing all untracked files, including build products. This can be used (possibly in conjunction with git reset) to create a pristine working directory to test a clean build.
-n
Don’t actually remove anything, just show what would be done.
-f
If the Git configuration variable clean.requireForce is not set to false, Git clean will refuse to delete files or directories unless given -f, -n, or -i. Git will refuse to delete directories within the .git subdirectory or file, unless a second -f is given.
you have a very simple git command git checkout .
If you are in case of submodule and no other solutions work try:
To check what is the problem (maybe a "dirty" case) use:
git diff
To remove stash
git submodule update
It seems like the complete solution is:
git clean -df
git checkout -- .
git clean removes all untracked files (warning: while it won't delete ignored files mentioned directly in .gitignore, it may delete ignored files residing in folders) and git checkout clears all unstaged changes.
For all unstaged files in current working directory use:
git checkout -- .
For a specific file use:
git checkout -- path/to/file/to/revert
-- here to remove argument disambiguation.
For Git 2.23 onwards, one may want to use the more specific
git restore .
resp.
git restore path/to/file/to/revert
that together with git switch replaces the overloaded git checkout (see here), and thus removes the argument disambiguation.
git checkout -f
man git-checkout:
-f, --force
When switching branches, proceed even if the index or the working tree differs from HEAD. This is used to throw away local changes.
When checking out paths from the index, do not fail upon unmerged entries; instead, unmerged entries are ignored.
I had a weird situation where a file is always unstaged, this helps me to resolve.
git rm .gitattributes
git add -A
git reset --hard
Tried all the solutions above but still couldn't get rid of new, unstaged files.
Use git clean -f to remove those new files - with caution though! Note the force option.
Just use:
git stash -u
Done. Easy.
If you really care about your stash stack then you can follow with git stash drop. But at that point you're better off using (from Mariusz Nowak):
git checkout -- .
git clean -df
Nonetheless, I like git stash -u the best because it "discards" all tracked and untracked changes in just one command. Yet git checkout -- . only discards tracked changes,
and git clean -df only discards untracked changes... and typing both commands is far too much work :)
To do a permanent discard:
git reset --hard
To save changes for later:
git stash
If you merely wish to remove changes to existing files, use checkout (documented here).
git checkout -- .
--) tells Git that what follows should be taken as its second argument (path), that you skipped specification of a branch..) indicates all paths. If you want to remove files added since your last commit, use clean (documented here):
git clean -i
-i option initiates an interactive clean, to prevent mistaken deletions. If you wish to move changes to a holding space for later access, use stash (documented here):
git stash
This works even in directories that are; outside of normal git permissions.
sudo chmod -R 664 ./* && git checkout -- . && git clean -dfx
Happened to me recently
If you aren't interested in keeping the unstaged changes (especially if the staged changes are new files), I found this handy:
git diff | git apply --reverse
What follows is really only a solution if you are working with a fork of a repository where you regularly synchronize (e.g. pull request) with another repo. Short answer: delete fork and refork, but read the warnings on github.
I had a similar problem, perhaps not identical, and I'm sad to say my solution is not ideal, but it is ultimately effective.
I would often have git status messages like this (involving at least 2/4 files):
$ git status
# Not currently on any branch.
# Changes to be committed:
# (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
# modified: doc/PROJECT/MEDIUM/ATS-constraint/constraint_s2var.dats
# modified: doc/PROJECT/MEDIUM/ATS-constraint/parsing/parsing_s2var.dats
#
# Changes not staged for commit:
# (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
# (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
# modified: doc/PROJECT/MEDIUM/ATS-constraint/constraint_s2Var.dats
# modified: doc/PROJECT/MEDIUM/ATS-constraint/parsing/parsing_s2Var.dats
A keen eye will note that these files have dopplegangers that are a single letter in case off. Somehow, and I have no idea what led me down this path to start with (as I was not working with these files myself from the upstream repo), I had switched these files. Try the many solutions listed on this page (and other pages) did not seem to help.
I was able to fix the problem by deleting my forked repository and all local repositories, and reforking. This alone was not enough; upstream had to rename the files in question to new filenames. As long as you don't have any uncommited work, no wikis, and no issues that diverge from the upstream repository, you should be just fine. Upstream may not be very happy with you, to say the least. As for my problem, it is undoubtedly a user error as I'm not that proficient with git, but the fact that it is far from easy to fix points to an issue with git as well.
Source: Stackoverflow.com