Git refuses to reset/discard files

Question

I have a project with certain js files which I cannot update. I run OSX locally and my remote/staging server is Linux (CentOS).

Right after cloning my project locally, i noticed I have all those files with git status modified. I never modified them, so I tried to discard changes or reset them, but they come up again. The change that is in the modification is deleting all lines and adding them again.

I'm not sure why this happens or how to fix it so that my git status is clean as it needs to be.

Here is a few lines from the git status:

#   modified:   app/webroot/js/ckeditor/plugins/devtools/lang/el.js
#   modified:   app/webroot/js/ckeditor/plugins/devtools/lang/fa.js
#   modified:   app/webroot/js/ckeditor/plugins/devtools/lang/gu.js

UPDATE 1:

I have now managed to commit the above files, but the staging server is locked because it won't pull new edits:

error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge:
    app/webroot/js/ckeditor/_source/lang/ar.js
    app/webroot/js/ckeditor/_source/lang/bg.js
    app/webroot/js/ckeditor/_source/lang/bn.js
    app/webroot/js/ckeditor/_source/lang/cs.js
    ...
Aborting

I can't commit/push because:

Updates were rejected because a pushed branch tip is behind its remote counterpart

I tried:

git reset --hard

and

git stash
git stash drop

But they don't work, nothing happens.

UPDATE 2:

git diff gives me:

The file will have its original line endings in your working directory.
warning: CRLF will be replaced by LF in app/webroot/js/ckeditor/_source/lang/fa.js.
The file will have its original line endings in your working directory.
warning: CRLF will be replaced by LF in app/webroot/js/ckeditor/_source/lang/gu.js.
The file will have its original line endings in your working directory.
...

Answer 1

Normalize line endings

The change that is in the modification is deleting all lines and adding them again.

This is because the newlines are being changed between the committed files and the files on disk.

Github has a handy page detailing how to deal with this kind of problem, in brief (for linux/OSX), step one is to change your git config so it sorts out the line endings for you:

git config --global core.autocrlf input

Then commit line-endings normalization:

git rm --cached -r .
# Remove everything from the index.

git reset --hard
# Write both the index and working directory from git's database.

git add .
# Prepare to make a commit by staging all the files that will get normalized.
# This is your chance to inspect which files were never normalized. You should
# get lots of messages like: "warning: CRLF will be replaced by LF in file."

git commit -m "Normalize line endings"
# Commit

And then, line endings should be handled correctly. See the help page on github for more information, or the relevant section of the git docs formatting and whitespace.

Resolving linux-machine conflicts

the staging server is locked because it won't pull new edits.

The error message reads "Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge:", that means they contain local changes which should either be committed or discarded before continuing. Assuming normal usage for the staging server (it doesn't have any intentional changes) the local changes can be discarded. For example do the following:

$ git fetch origin
# Retrieve updates

$ git reset --hard origin/master
# Forcibly change the current branch to match origin/master

This will retrieve the repository history, without updating the working copy, and then update to exactly match the master branch in the repository. Note that the last command will discard all uncommitted changes.