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.

Answer 1

⚠ 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/<branch> refs to latest:

git fetch --all

Backup your current branch:

git branch backup-master

Then, you have two options:

git reset --hard origin/master

OR If you are on some other branch:

git reset --hard origin/<branch_name>

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

Answer 2

Try this:

git reset --hard HEAD
git pull

It should do what you want.

Answer 3

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
...

Answer 4

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 "local file server commit message"

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.

Answer 5

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?

Answer 6

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...

Answer 7

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 <branch>: ...
stash@{1}: WIP on <branch>: ...

$ 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}

Answer 8

You might find this command helpful to throw away local changes:

git checkout <your-branch> -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

Answer 9

Instead of merging with git pull, try this:

git fetch --all

followed by:

git reset --hard origin/master.

Answer 10

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.

Answer 11

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.

Answer 12

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?

1. 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.

2. 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".

Answer 13

I had the same problem. No one gave me this solution, but it worked for me.

I solved it by:

1. Delete all the files. Leave just the .git directory.
2. git reset --hard HEAD
3. git pull
4. git push

Now it works.

Answer 14

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 "git pull --rebase" do?.

Answer 15

I had a similar problem. I had to do this:

git reset --hard HEAD
git clean -f
git pull

Answer 16

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.

Answer 17

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

Answer 18

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)

Answer 19

git fetch --all && git reset --hard origin/master && git pull

Answer 20

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!

Answer 21

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.

Answer 22

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

Answer 23

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!

Answer 24

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 && 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...

Answer 25

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.

Answer 26

Use:

git fetch --all

Then if you are on the master branch,

git reset --hard origin/master

else

git reset --hard origin/master<branch_name>

Answer 27

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.

Answer 28

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.

Answer 29

Reset the index and the head to origin/master, but do not reset the working tree:

git reset origin/master

Answer 30

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.