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Is there a way to do a git pull that ignores any local file changes without blowing the directory away and having to perform a git clone?

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  • 32
    By "ignores" do you mean "overwrites"? Commented Nov 11, 2010 at 17:21
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    @Cascabel It means to revert all the local changes, uncommit all the local commits, delete all the local new files and directories, undelete all the locally deleted files and directories, etc. In short, just run a command as if rm -rf local_repo && git clone remote_url. Commented Mar 12, 2018 at 8:07
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    Does this answer your question? How do I force "git pull" to overwrite local files? Commented Dec 4, 2020 at 15:21
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    11 years later, and I'm still waiting for a simple, reliable way to do this. I loathe "git" so much... it wastes so much of my time. Commented Mar 23, 2022 at 8:41

16 Answers 16

Reset to default
1185

If you mean you want the pull to overwrite local changes, doing the merge as if the working tree were clean, well, clean the working tree:

git reset --hard git pull

If there are untracked local files you could use git clean to remove them.

  • git clean -f to remove untracked files
  • -df to remove untracked files and directories
  • -xdf to remove untracked or ignored files or directories

If on the other hand you want to keep the local modifications somehow, you'd use stash to hide them away before pulling, then reapply them afterwards:

git stash git pull git stash pop

I don't think it makes any sense to literally ignore the changes, though - half of pull is merge, and it needs to merge the committed versions of content with the versions it fetched.

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13 Comments

If after git reset your files still differ from the remote, read stackoverflow.com/questions/1257592/…
Git is the strangest thing ever. Git reset --hard done. Then git status: Your branch is ahead by 2 commits.
@shailenTJ "Local changes" here means uncommitted changes, not local commits. git reset --hard affects the former, not the latter. If you want to fully reset to the remote's state, git reset --hard origin/<branch> - but often and in this case, those two commits you're ahead of origin by are work you did, not something you want to throw away.
So this is the same thing as destroying the local repository and re-downloading, right? I just want to be able to force the pull and overwrite changes for convenience. 99% of the time I get this error message when I've accidentally messed something up locally and just want to start over from the repo.
@adelriosantiago Artur's answer also has a reset --hard. It throws away exactly the same as the part of this answer. And yes, throwing things away is potentially dangerous, but it's what the OP asked to do. Their alternative was deleting the directory and re-cloning. They wanted to throw things away. If you want to, say, commit to a local branch and also separately fetch origin's master, great, that's a more common thing to want to do - it's just not what this question was about.
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572

For me the following worked:

  1. First fetch all changes:

    $ git fetch --all

  2. Then reset the master:

    $ git reset --hard origin/master

    Note - For users of github, "master" was replaced with "main" in October 2020. For projects created since then you may need to use "main" instead, like:

    $ git reset --hard origin/main

  3. Pull/update:

    $ git pull
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10 Comments

this even works when u have committed ur local changes, but still u want to revert
@Marco Servetto: You first fetch all your git changes, but don't apply them yet. Then you reset the master to the last state (updated). If you skip the first step, you will revert changes to the old master (local). From my experience, the way I described it, never causes problems. All other attempts do at the end.
This worked for me, I wanted to ignore all my local changes including recovering deleted files
Correct answer.
I just did steps 1 and 2, and it seemed sufficient. What is the purpose of step 3?
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You just want a command which gives exactly the same result as rm -rf local_repo && git clone remote_url, right? I also want this feature. I wonder why git does not provide such a command (such as git reclone or git sync), neither does svn provide such a command (such as svn recheckout or svn sync).

Try the following command:

git reset --hard origin/master git clean -fxd git pull
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3 Comments

That's what really works, even when you already have local commits that you want to remove.
Warning guys!! git clean -fxd removes files from .gitignore also.
@RameshNavi Sure. This is exactly what is wanted. What is wanted is to have a faster way to re-clone it, i.e. to delete the entire local repo and then clone it.
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The command bellow wont work always. If you do just:

$ git checkout thebranch Already on 'thebranch' Your branch and 'origin/thebranch' have diverged, and have 23 and 7 different commits each, respectively. $ git reset --hard HEAD is now at b05f611 Here the commit message bla, bla $ git pull Auto-merging thefile1.c CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in thefile1.c Auto-merging README.md CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in README.md Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.

and so on...

To really start over, downloading thebranch and overwriting all your local changes, just do:

$ git checkout thebranch $ git reset --hard origin/thebranch

This will work just fine.

$ git checkout thebranch Already on 'thebranch' Your branch and 'origin/thebranch' have diverged, and have 23 and 7 different commits each, respectively. $ git reset --hard origin/thebranch HEAD is now at 7639058 Here commit message again... $ git status # On branch thebranch nothing to commit (working directory clean) $ git checkout thebranch Already on 'thebranch'
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3 Comments

YES. This is what I needed for an ultimate "don't give an F about what's local" approach. Thanks. :)
To completely remove all the local changes, you need the command git clean -fxd
Just be careful with git-clean - Remove untracked files from the working tree, as this affects "untracked files", not exactly what OP asked for. But ok, good to be here in the comment, just in case someone wants to also remove untracked files.
36

The shortest way to do it is:

git pull --rebase --autostash
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2 Comments

Exactly what I was looking for, I was working on implementing the auto stash feature manually, the --autostash parameter does exactly what I need. Thanks!
Gives an error when there are untracked files.
14

I usually do:

git checkout . git pull

In the project's root folder.

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3 Comments

It will delete local changes
@UjjwalRoy From the comment on the question, I believe that was the intention. But when I want to save local changes I use git add -A git stash
Exactly. The question was how to delete local changes and download from git.
13 
git fetch --all && git reset --hard origin/master
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13

This worked for me:

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

With the accepted answer, I get conflict errors.

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5 Comments

That's very similar to the 2015 answer of Artur Barseghyan... but I'd still like to know what the purpose of the 3rd command is: the working files have changed after the 2nd command, and the 3rd command says "Already up to date"
that is the only combination that worked on my environment, maybe you are seeing a different thing, for me, I needed the three commands
Interesting. Might be a version thing. I'm on git 2.7.4. But I've also just seen a new comment from Artur Barseghyan: "Otherwise you might find yourself working on accidentally outdated master."
maybe, but the only thing I can say is "this worked for me when no other solution did", so it might help others
To completely remove all the local changes, you need the command git clean -fxd
13

If you are on a branch, and want to discard any local changes on the branch and pull the remote branch, but encounter Your branch and 'origin/<branch_name>' have diverged, it can be resolved while staying on the branch by:

git fetch --all git reset --hard origin/<branch_name>
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2 Comments

I rely on this one
this worked, what I like in this answer his - In" git reset --hard origin/<branch_name>" . Branch name varies so we need to enter the branch name we want to reflect
11

Look at git stash to put all of your local changes into a "stash file" and revert to the last commit. At that point, you can apply your stashed changes, or discard them.

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9

If you are on Linux:

git fetch for file in `git diff origin/master..HEAD --name-only`; do rm -f "$file"; done git pull

The for loop will delete all tracked files which are changed in the local repo, so git pull will work without any problems.
The nicest thing about this is that only the tracked files will be overwritten by the files in the repo, all other files will be left untouched.

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3 Comments

I think you meant "tracked files" which is exactly what I need, thanks.
any equivalent for Powershell?
great solution, it worked for me to overwrite a sqlite DB only if there are changes from the repo and keep the locally changed version on the prototype deploy.. thanks!
5

This worked for me:

  1. git restore <fileName> or git restore .
  2. git pull
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3

This will fetch the current branch and attempt to do a fast forward to master:

git fetch && git merge --ff-only origin/master
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1 Comment

This should be the answer!
2

.gitignore

"Adding unwanted files to .gitignore works as long as you have not initially committed them to any branch. "

Also you can run:

git update-index --assume-unchanged filename

https://chamindac.blogspot.com/2017/07/ignoring-visual-studio-2017-created.html

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0

Also, it's possible to keep changes from local commits and push them as a new commit. I use these steps when I have a mess in my local commits.

  1. git reset --soft origin/main
  2. git stash
  3. git pull --rebase
  4. git stash pop
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0

git pull will give error if we change any thing in any files in our local system, So we need to git stash

  1. git pull I got the message - error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge: Please commit your changes or stash them before you merge. Aborting

  2. git stash Saved working directory and index state WIP on ....

  3. git pull Updating... 10 files changed, 291 insertions(+), 169 deletions(-)

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