.gitignore and "The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by checkout"
GitGit MergeGitignoreGit Problem Overview
So I added a folder to my .gitignore file.
Once I do a git status
it tells me
# On branch latest
nothing to commit (working directory clean)
However, when I try to change branches I get the following:
My-MacBook-Pro:webapp marcamillion$ git checkout develop
error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by checkout:
public/system/images/9/thumb/red-stripe.jpg
public/system/images/9/original/red-stripe.jpg
public/system/images/8/thumb/red-stripe-red.jpg
public/system/images/8/original/red-stripe-red.jpg
public/system/images/8/original/00-louis_c.k.-chewed_up-cover-2008.jpg
public/system/images/7/thumb/red-stripe-dark.jpg
public/system/images/7/original/red-stripe-dark.jpg
public/system/images/7/original/DSC07833.JPG
public/system/images/6/thumb/red-stripe-bw.jpg
public/system/images/6/original/website-logo.png
public/system/images/6/original/red-stripe-bw.jpg
public/system/images/5/thumb/Guy_Waving_Jamaican_Flag.jpg
public/system/images/5/original/logocompv-colored-squares-100px.png
public/system/images/5/original/Guy_Waving_Jamaican_Flag.jpg
public/system/images/4/thumb/DSC_0001.JPG
public/system/images/4/original/logo.png
public/system/images/4/original/DSC_0001.JPG
public/system/images/4/original/2-up.jpg
public/system/images/3/thumb/logo2.gif
public/system/images/3/original/logo2.gif
public/system/images/3/original/Guy_Waving_Jamaican_Flag.jpg
public/system/images/3/original/11002000962.jpg
public/system/images/2/thumb/Profile Pic.jpg
public/system/images/2/original/Profile Pic.jpg
public/system/images/2/original/02 Login Screen.jpg
public/system/images/1/original/Argentina-2010-World-Cup.jpg
Please move or remove them before you can switch branches.
Aborting
This is what my .gitignore file looks like:
.bundle
.DS_Store
db/*.sqlite3
log/*.log
tmp/**/*
public/system/images/*
public/system/avatars/*
How do I get this working so I can switch branches without deleting those files?
If I make a change, will it affect those files? In other words, if I came back to this branch afterwards would everything be perfect as up to my latest commit?
I don't want to lose those files, I just don't want them tracked.
Git Solutions
Solution 1 - Git
WARNING: it will delete untracked files, so it's not a great answer to the question being posed.
I hit this message as well. In my case, I didn't want to keep the files, so this worked for me:
###git 2.11 and newer
git clean -d -f .
###older git
git clean -d -f ""
If you also want to remove files ignored by git, then execute the following command.
BE WARNED!!! THIS MOST PROBABLY DESTROYS YOUR PROJECT, USE ONLY IF YOU KNOW 100% WHAT YOU ARE DOING
###git 2.11 and newer
git clean -d -fx .
###older git
git clean -d -fx ""
http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-clean.html
-
-x
means ignored files are also removed as well as files unknown to git. -
-d
means remove untracked directories in addition to untracked files. -
-f
is required to force it to run.
Solution 2 - Git
> Warning: This will delete the local files that are not indexed
Just force it : git checkout -f another-branch
Solution 3 - Git
It seems like you want the files ignored but they have already been commited. .gitignore has no effect on files that are already in the repo so they need to be removed with git rm --cached
. The --cached
will prevent it from having any effect on your working copy and it will just mark as removed the next time you commit. After the files are removed from the repo then the .gitignore will prevent them from being added again.
But you have another problem with your .gitignore, you are excessively using wildcards and its causing it to match less than you expect it to. Instead lets change the .gitignore and try this.
.bundle
.DS_Store
db/*.sqlite3
log/*.log
tmp/
public/system/images/
public/system/avatars/
Solution 4 - Git
If you're on OS X, it may be because a file's name has had certain characters change case. Try setting the following config option:
git config core.ignorecase true
Solution 5 - Git
This worked for me.
1. git fetch --all
2. git reset --hard origin/{branch_name}
Solution 6 - Git
Git is telling you that it wants to create files (named public/system/images/9/...
etc), but you already have existing files in that directory that aren't tracked by Git. Perhaps somebody else added those files to the Git repository, and this is the first time you have switched to that branch?
There's probably a reason why those files in your develop
branch but not in your current branch. You may have to ask your collaborators why that is.
> how do I get this working so I can switch branches without deleting those files?
You can't do it without making the files disappear somehow. You could rename public
to my_public
or something for now.
> if I came back to this branch afterwards would everything be perfect as up to my latest commit?
If you commit your changes, Git won't lose them. If you don't commit your changes, then Git will try really hard not to overwrite work that you have done. That's what Git is warning you about in the first instance here (when you tried to switch branches).
Solution 7 - Git
There is a command for this delicate task (permanently deleting untracked files)
git clean -i
Then git pull
will do.
Solution 8 - Git
These two functions
git rm --cached
git checkout -f another-branch
did NOT work for me.
Instead, I physically removed the file (in eclipse) as what Git tells you to do;
Please move or remove them before you can switch branches.
and then I add/committed it.
and then I pulled and it worked!
Solution 9 - Git
For those who need something less far-reaching than Scott Schafer’s answer,
git clean -f
will likely work. I highly suggest running
git clean --dry-run
first. That command will output a list of files that Git will remove if you run git clean -f
, and might save you the pain of inadvertently removing something you didn’t want to.
See this Stack Oveflow answer or the docs for more information on git clean
.
Solution 10 - Git
Unfortunately neither git rm --cached
or git clean -d -fx ""
did it for me.
My solution ended up being pushing my branch to remote, cloning a new repo, then doing my merge in the new repo. Other people accessing the repo had to do the same.
Moral of the story: use a .gitignore
file from inception.
Solution 11 - Git
If you want to quickly resolve this question,You can use this command:
git checkout -f dev
Solution 12 - Git
I had the same problem when checking out to a branch based on an earlier commit. Git refused to checkout because of untracked files.
I've found a solution and I hope it will help you too.
Adding the affected directories to .gitignore
and issuing $ git rm -r --cached
on them is apparently not enough.
Assume you want to make a branch based an earlier commit K to test some stuff and come back to the current version. I would do it in the following steps:
-
Setup the untracked files: edit the
.gitignore
and apply$ git rm -r --cached
on the files and directories you want the git to ignore. Add also the file.gitignore
itself to.gitignore
and don't forget to issue$ git rm -r --cached .gitignore
. This will ensure the the ignore behavior of git leaves the same in the earlier commits. -
Commit the changes you just made:
$ git add -A $ git commit
-
Save the current log, otherwise you may get problems coming back to the current version
$ git log > ../git.log
-
Hard reset to the commit K
$ git reset --hard version_k
-
Create a branch based on the commit K
$ git branch commit_k_branch
-
Checkout into that branch
$ git checkout commit_k_branch
-
Do your stuff and commit it
-
Checkout back into master again
$ git checkout master
-
Reset to the current Version again
$ git reset current_version
or$ git reset ORIG_HEAD
-
Now you can reset hard to the HEAD
`git reset --hard HEAD`
NOTE! Do not skip the next-to-last step (like e. g. $ git reset --hard ORIG_HEAD
) otherwise the untracked files git complained above will get lost.
I also made sure the files git complained about were not deleted. I copied them to a text-file and issued the command $ for i in $(cat ../test.txt); do ls -ahl $i; done
If you checkout to the branch mentioned above again, do not forget to issue $ git status
to ensure no unwanted changes appear.
Solution 13 - Git
This happened to me on a Windows 8 system, using Git from the command prompt. The rest of my team uses TFS, and I use Microsoft's git-tf to push/pull between TFS and my local Git repository.
The problem arose due to some files that had been renamed only to change their case. What appears to have happened was this:
- The files were checked in with mixed casing in their names.
- In a later commit, the file names were changed to all lower-case.
- git-tf initially got the files in mixed case.
- When the files were renamed to lower-case, git-tf didn't get the files because to Windows 8 those file names are equivalent.
- Since Git is case-sensitive, it complained that I had the mixed-case files that weren't in source control. But using
git status
, I couldn't see any changes, since in the Windows command prompt those file names are equivalent.
The simplest solution for me was:
git checkout
a previous version of the project, well before those files were ever added.- Then
git checkout
the latest version of the project, with the correct file casing.
Solution 14 - Git
In my case, the problem was with the submodules. master
was merged with another branch which added a new submodule to the project. The branch I was trying to checkout didn't have it, that's why git was complaining about untracked files and none of the other suggested solutions worked for me. I forced the checkout to my new branch, and pulled master.
git checkout -f my_branch
git pull origin master
git submodule update --init
Solution 15 - Git
In my case git rm --cached
didn't work.
But i got it with a git rebase
Solution 16 - Git
I was also facing a similar issue and i tried all the solutions posted above but it didn't work
The issue was caused when i renamed my onMusicUpdateListener.java
to OnMusicUpdateListener.java
in develop
branch.
Now master
had onMusicUpdateListener.java
and develop
had the same file as OnMusicUpdateListener.java
Now whenever i switched to master it gave me an error
The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by checkout
and then it aborted
.
In order to solve this, i forcefully checked out
master
branch
and then renamed my onMusicUpdateListener.java
to OnMusicUpdateListener.java
, committed
it and then merged
it with develop
branch.
Then i updated my develop
branch by merging
it into master
and now everything is back to normal and problem is solved.
Solution 17 - Git
that's easy to solve, git is saying that you have the same files in both branches, therefore you have to delete the specific files from master branch and then you will be able to merge:
git merge "your branch"
I hope it works for you, I just solved my error. my error was:
error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by merge:
.vs/slnx.sqlite
Please move or remove them before you merge.
Aborting
Now it is working!
In my case .vs/slnx.sqlite
was generated by visual studio, I needed to close it before delete it.
Solution 18 - Git
this commands solved my problem:
git add *
git stash
git pull
Solution 19 - Git
This could be a permission issue,
change the ownership,
sudo chown -v -R usr-name:group-name folder-name
Solution 20 - Git
2 files with the same name but different case might be the issue.
You can Delete one on these files or rename it. Ex:
Pdf.html.twig (The GOOD one)
pdf.html.twig (The one I deleted)
Solution 21 - Git
Move files, instead of delete
One way of avoiding deleting files is to move them instead. For example:
cd "`git rev-parse --show-toplevel`"
git checkout 2>&1 | while read f; do [ ! -e "$f" ] || mv "$f" "$f".bak; done
Solution 22 - Git
If you have renamed a file locally and then do a pull
, it will display that error message.
Solution 23 - Git
In my case, I was seeing this error because I am using a popular open source CMS and the directory which was causing issues was the uploads directory which the CMS writes to.
So what it was saying is that there are files which you don't have, but which you can't get from versioning.
I'm grabbing all the files from the live site to my local, then I'll check this into the repo in the hope that this fixes the issue.
Solution 24 - Git
Delete .gitignore file from appname/gen/ to solve this issue.
Solution 25 - Git
I just went to the file system and deleted the file directly, then continued with git checkout and it worked.
I've had the problem occur several times and it may be related to developers doing delete, push, re-add, push or some such thing.
Solution 26 - Git
Most of the answers consider deleting or removing the files, which is the easy way. But sometimes you don't want to get rid of the local files. But merge with a strategy, so git has solution for this too ;
git merge --strategy=ours master
Solution 27 - Git
Just delete the files or rename them.
e.g.
$ git pull
Enter passphrase for key '/c/Users/PC983/.ssh/id_rsa':
error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge:
ajax/productPrice.php
Please commit your changes or stash them before you merge.
error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by merge:
ajax/product.php
Please move or remove them before you merge.
Aborting
Updating a04cbe7a..6aa8ead5
I had to rename/delete ajax/product.php and ajax/produtPrice.php.
Don't worry, git pull will bring them back. I suggest you to rename them instead of deleting, because you might loose some changes.
If this does not help, then you have to delete the whole Branch and create it again and then do git pull origin remotebranch
Solution 28 - Git
In order to save the modified files and to use the modified content later. I found this error while i try checking out a branch and when trying to rebase. Try Git stash
git stash
Solution 29 - Git
Check if any folder name having '/' or any special symbol then rename that folders. Then you just clone the repository to another location.
Solution 30 - Git
A simple solution might be:
Just make sure that you are in the correct working directory in GitBash
.
That Message occure almost every time if a User tries to merge a directory too high in his folder hierarchy.
Example:
/workspace/git/myBashSourceFolder/myProjectSourcefolder
Scenario:
User cloned repo in git-folder
he created a new Java Project in Eclipse, imported the cloned repo. Eclipse set myProjectSourceFolder as Source Folder in his local Project. therefore the User entered it in git bash and pushed, pulled and commited his project from there. git syncs therefore myProjectSourceFolder
- but has no record in his history for myBashSourceFolder. Therefore a push / pull /merge from myBashSourceFolder will produce the given output, if User tries to sync from there next time, instead of the folder he worked before.
> Solution: Enter correct Folder and try a pull again. In almost every > time I encountered, this solution worked fine :)
Solution 31 - Git
In my case the problem was due to a file name changing from subscribe.ts
to Subscribe.ts
.
So I checked if my branch dev
was up to date with current branch I was in, main
.
(current branch main)
-
git merge dev
> Already up to date
-
git branch -d dev
-
git checkout -b dev