Git Pull While Ignoring Local Changes?

git git-pull
markdorison picture markdorison · Nov 11, 2010 · Viewed 577.8k times · Source

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?

Answer

Cascabel picture Cascabel · Nov 11, 2010

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. Use git clean -f to remove untracked files, -df to remove untracked files and directories, and -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.

Related questions

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

How do I force an overwrite of local files on a git pull? The scenario is the following: A team member is modifying the templates for a website we are working on They are adding some images to the images …

Read More
What is the difference between 'git pull' and 'git fetch'?

What are the differences between git pull and git fetch?

Read More
How do I ignore an error on 'git pull' about my local changes would be overwritten by merge?

How do I ignore the following error message on Git pull? Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge What if I want to overwrite them? I've tried things like git pull -f, but nothing works. …

Read More