git: Switch branch and ignore any changes without committing

350
votes

I was working on a git branch and was ready to commit my changes, so I made a commit with a useful commit message. I then absentmindedly made minor changes to the code that are not worth keeping. I now want to change branches, but git gives me,

error: You have local changes to "X"; cannot switch branches.

Can I change branches without committing? If so, how can I set this up? If not, how do I get out of this problem? I want to ignore the minor changes without committing and just change branches.

15
gitbranchgit-checkout
I believe this only happens when they changes are staged for commit but not commited? git checkout works just fine for changing branches if you haven't staged the files yet using git add or the like. – Jeremy Wall
Hi Jeremy, What do you mean by 'staged'? Forcing the user to commit file before changes branches doesn't seems like a great workflow. For example, if I'm in the master repository and quickly want to check something in a branch. I have to commit the code to the master first, even it the code is half written! Are you saying that indeed, it should be possible to checkout a branch in this situation? – Daniel Farrell
@boyfarrell You can use 'Git stash' to temporarily save the changes without committing. – Howiecamp
Cross-linking the closely related How do I force “git pull” to overwrite local files? – user56reinstatemonica8
when you switch to a branch without committing changes in the old branch, git tries to merge the changes to the files in the new branch. If merging is done without any conflict, swithing branches will be successful and you can see the changes in the new branch. But if a conflict occur, you will get error: You have local changes to '<filename>'; cannot switch branches. and branch will not change. you can do git checkout -m <branch-name> to merge conflicts and checkout to the branch and resolve conflicts yourself, or git checkout -f <branch-name> to ignore changes. – samad montazeri

15 Answers

459
votes

You need a clean state to change branches. The branch checkout will only be allowed if it does not affect the 'dirty files' (as Charles Bailey remarks in the comments).

Otherwise, you should either:

  • stash your current change or
  • reset --hard HEAD (if you do not mind losing those minor changes) or
  • checkout -f (When switching branches, proceed even if the index or the working tree differs from HEAD. This is used to throw away local changes. )

Or, more recently:

Proceed even if the index or the working tree differs from HEAD.
Both the index and working tree are restored to match the switching target.

This differs from git switch -m <branch-name>, which triggers a three-way merge between the current branch, your working tree contents, and the new branch is done: you won't loose your work in progress that way.

139
votes

If you want to discard the changes,

git checkout -- <file>
git checkout branch

If you want to keep the changes,

git stash save
git checkout branch
git stash pop
70
votes

well, it should be

git stash save
git checkout branch
// do something
git checkout oldbranch
git stash pop
25
votes

Follow, 

$: git checkout -f

$: git checkout next_branch
17
votes

Note that if you've merged remote branches or have local commits and want to go back to the remote HEAD you must do:

git reset --hard origin/HEAD

HEAD alone will only refer to the local commit/merge -- several times I have forgotten that when resetting and end up with "your repository is X commits ahead.." when I fully intended to nuke ALL changes/commits and return to the remote branch.

13
votes

None of these answers helped me because I still had untracked files even after reset and stash. I had to do:

git reset --hard HEAD
git clean -d -f
8
votes

If you have made changes to files that Git also needs to change when switching branches, it won't let you. To discard working changes, use:

git reset --hard HEAD

Then, you will be able to switch branches.

5
votes

git checkout -f your_branch_name

git checkout -f your_branch_name

if you have troubles reverting changes: 

git checkout .

if you want to remove untracked directories and files: 

git clean -fd
4
votes

switching to a new branch losing changes:

git checkout -b YOUR_NEW_BRANCH_NAME --force

switching to an existing branch losing changes:

git checkout YOUR_BRANCH --force
4
votes

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

3
votes

Follow these steps:

  1. Git stash save will save all your changes even if you switch between branches.
git stash save
  1. Git checkout any other branch, now since you saved your changes you can move around any branch. The above command will make sure that your changes are saved.
git checkout branch
  1. Now when you come back to the branch use this command to get all your changes back.
git stash pop
2
votes

Close terminal, delete the folder where your project is, then clone again your project and voilá.

2
votes

If you want to keep the changes and change the branch in a single line command

git stash && git checkout <branch_name> && git stash pop
2
votes

Move uncommited changes to a new branch

I created a .gitconfig alias for this:

[alias]
spcosp = !"git stash push && git checkout \"$@\" && git stash pop --index #"

To change to new-branch-name, use:

git spcosp new-branch-name

And any non-commited file and index changes will be kept.

0
votes

To switch to other branch without committing the changes when git stash doesn't work. You can use the below command:

git checkout -f branch-name