repo.checkout() : Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by checkout

Question

I am using the following code to get the bug fixing commits in a list of GitHub repositories.

 def get_commit_bug_fixing(self):
        EMPTY_TREE_SHA = "4b825dc642cb6eb9a060e54bf8d69288fbee4904"
        detected_sml = []
        selected_projects_by_version = pd.DataFrame()
        curr_path = ''
        bug_fixing_commits = self.selected_projects_commits[self.selected_projects_commits['is_bug_fixing'] == True]
        for _, row in bug_fixing_commits.iterrows():
            if row['path'] != curr_path:
                curr_path = row['path']
                g_repo = git.Git(curr_path)
                g_repo.init()
            if row['parent_sha'] == EMPTY_TREE_SHA:
                continue
            g_repo.checkout(row['parent_sha'])
            if row['old_object']:
                detected_sml += util.compute_file_metrics(row['path'], row['old_object'], row['parent_sha'])
            else:
                detected_sml += util.compute_file_metrics(row['path'], row['object'], row['parent_sha'])
                sml_dict = dict(Counter([sml[4] for sml in detected_sml]))
                pre_dict = {}
                pre_dict['sml_name'] = list(sml_dict.keys())
                pre_dict['sml_occs'] = list(sml_dict.values())
                df = pd.DataFrame(pre_dict)
                df['repoName'] = row['repoName']
                df['repoOrg'] = row['repoOrg']
                df['tag_commit_sha'] = row['tag_commit_sha']
                df['tag'] = row['tag']
                selected_projects_by_version = pd.concat([selected_projects_by_version, df])
        selected_projects_by_version.to_csv('bug_fixing_commits.csv', index=False)

However, after getting to the g_repo.checkout(row['parent_sha']) line I get the following error:

git.exc.GitCommandError: Cmd('git') failed due to: exit code(1)
cmdline: git checkout 6ada1a2e125f9b40bc38f9d6b69c60e4fe3b7f4e
stderr: 'error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by checkout:
...list of files path...
Please commit your changes or stash them before you switch branches.
Aborting'

How can I resolve this issue? I am not sure what am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Looking at the error message, it seems as your are trying to checkout another commit while your current local repository has some uncommitted modifications.

The problem is not your code but your code algorithm. Your git operations are missing some steps.

Before doing the line

g_repo.checkout(row['parent_sha']) 

You may verify if your repository is clean by using

git status

and if the repository is clean you may make the checkout otherwise, commit (to save) or discard (to delete) or stash (to save for later) the modifications in the repository before doing any checkout.

N.B: Even manually, generally, if you have uncommitted changes in your repository, git refused that you checkout another branch or commit.