Fatal Git error when switching branch

Question

Error message:

fatal: git checkout: updating paths is incompatible with switching branches/forcing

How to get past this Git checkout error?

Answer 1

By explicitly specifying “git checkout HEAD $blah” instead of just saying “git checkout $blah”, assuming you did want to check out a file.

You don’t say what you were trying nor what you typed, however, so no one can give you anything but a blind guess.

Answer 2

When I encounter this message, it is because I have tried to do git checkout -f $blah, expecting to throw away local changes, as described in git checkout --help.

Instead, I use rm $blah && git checkout $blah to throw away local changes.