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

Question

How do I force an overwrite of local files on a git pull? My local repository contains a file of the same filename as on the server.

error: Untracked working tree file 'example.txt' would be overwritten by merge

Answer 1

⚠ Warning:

Any uncommitted local change to tracked files will be lost, even if staged.

But any local file that's not tracked by Git will not be affected.

---

First, update all origin/<branch> refs to latest:

git fetch --all

Backup your current branch (e.g. master):

git branch backup-master

Jump to the latest commit on origin/master and checkout those files:

git reset --hard origin/master

Explanation:

git fetch downloads the latest from remote without trying to merge or rebase anything.

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, even if staged (with git add), will be lost. Make sure to stash or commit anything you need. For example, run the following:

git stash

And later (after git reset), reapply these uncommitted changes:

git stash pop

Which may create merge conflicts.

Answer 2

Step 1. (optional)
From the root of your local repository, save a backup and empty the current folder:

mkdir -p ../<branch>-bkp && mv --backup=t * ../<branch>-bkp

Step 2. Download all files and folders of the branch from the remote repository:

git checkout <branch> && git add -A . && git reset --hard origin/<branch> && git pull

where you should replace <branch> 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/<branch_to_overwrite> 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

Answer 3

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/

Answer 4

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 5

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 -- <filename>

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.

Answer 6

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.

Answer 7

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 <file1> <file2> ...

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 <commit before problem commit>
git reset <problem commit>
git checkout <file1> <file2> ...
git pull

Answer 8

"My local changes was small, or my changes doesn't work. I just want to reset everything back to original. I know that all my local changes will be lost."

If that's the case then:

git reset --hard
git pull

Answer 9

For those who don't like reset, I like this approach:

git checkout branchname      # go to your branch
git fetch origin branchname  # fetch the remote
git checkout -b backup       # optionally, mark your remote as a backup
git branch -f branchname origin/branchname # force your local branch to be equal to the fetched origin/branchname

Answer 10

This solution is always running.

cd $GIT_ROOT_DIRECTORY
git fetch origin/$TARGET_BRANCH
git rm -rf --cached .
git reset --hard origin/TARGET_BRANCH
git clean -df
git pull origin $TARGET_BRANCH

Answer 11

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 12

Here is a generic solution if you do not always want to paste the branch name or you want to automate this within a script

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)

You also could add a bash alias using this command:

alias gplf='git fetch && echo "HEAD was at $(git rev-parse --short HEAD)" && git reset --hard origin/$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)'

Answer 13

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 14

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 15

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 16

You could try git pull --force or maybe stash your commits by using git stash and then running git pull.

Answer 17

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 18

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 19

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

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

Answer 20

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 21

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 22

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.

Answer 23

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 24

git restore file_to_override_from_remote

git pull

Answer 25

On Windows, do this single command:

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

Answer 26

Requirements:

1. Track local changes so no-one here ever loses them.
2. Make the local repository match the remote origin repository.

Solution:

1. Stash the local changes.

2. 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
   

Answer 27

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 28

This will remove all uncommitted changes, even if staged,
and then pull:

git reset --hard HEAD
git pull

But any local file that's not tracked by Git will not be affected.

Answer 29

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 30

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 31

Another way of solving this is to first stash any uncommitted changes using git stash and then run

git pull --rebase=interactive -s recursive -X theirs

In the interactive rebase you can change all your local undesired commits to drop, which will get rid of them and leave you at the head of the remote branch without introducing a merge commit.

Now you can run git stash apply if you had local stashed changed that you want to bring back.

Answer 32

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 33

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.

Answer 34

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 35

git fetch --all

git reset --hard origin/develop

Answer 36

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 37

I am not sure why anyone did not talk about FETCH_HEAD yet.

git fetch origin master && git reset --hard FETCH_HEAD

If you want to put it in an alias, the command would be:

git config --global alias.fpull '!git fetch origin master && git reset --hard FETCH_HEAD'

Answer 38

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 39

If you are working on your code and find the new changes a huge mistake or unwanted you can simply use an alternative like:

git restore .

where . means all the files present in the directory.

Answer 40

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.

Answer 41

The simplest way I found was to

1. Rename the branch to something else

2. Checkout to the branch you want to pull and pull from origin

   git branch -m to-delete
   git checkout main
   git pull
   

3. Finally, you can delete the old branch

   git branch -D to-delete

Answer 42

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} && 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

Answer 43

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

git reset origin/master

Answer 44

I was trapped in a similar problem my repository was in a branch in which every file was put in asubfolder myapp/subfolder and this command works to clean history.

 git clean -f -d 

Answer 45

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 webserver, 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 the newest data.

• The second command checks if there are any files that 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 46

Instead of merging with git pull, try this:

git fetch --all

followed by:

git reset --hard origin/master.

Answer 47

The key to this is using FETCH_HEAD.

git fetch origin <your e.g. feature branch>
git reset --hard FETCH_HEAD

I've tried HEAD and git pull and none worked.

Answer 48

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.

Answer 49

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 50

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>&1 >/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>&1 >/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.

Answer 51

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 52

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 53

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.