Git – How to Force ‘git pull’ to Overwrite Local Files

gitgit-fetchgit-pulloverwriteversion-control

How do I force an overwrite of local files on a git pull? My local repository contains a file of the same filename as on the server.

error: Untracked working tree file 'example.txt' would be overwritten by merge

Best Answer

⚠ Warning:

Any uncommitted local change to tracked files will be lost, even if staged.

But any local file that's not tracked by Git will not be affected.

First, update all origin/<branch> refs to latest:

git fetch --all

Backup your current branch (e.g. master):

git branch backup-master

Jump to the latest commit on origin/master and checkout those files:

git reset --hard origin/master

Explanation:

git fetch downloads the latest from remote without trying to merge or rebase anything.

git reset resets the master branch to what you just fetched. The --hard option changes all the files in your working tree to match the files in origin/master.

Maintain current local commits

^[*]: It's worth noting that it is possible to maintain current local commits by creating a branch from master before resetting:

git checkout master
git branch new-branch-to-save-current-commits
git fetch --all
git reset --hard origin/master

After this, all of the old commits will be kept in new-branch-to-save-current-commits.

Uncommitted changes

Uncommitted changes, even if staged (with git add), will be lost. Make sure to stash or commit anything you need. For example, run the following:

git stash

And later (after git reset), reapply these uncommitted changes:

git stash pop

Which may create merge conflicts.

Related Solutions

Git Pull – How to Git Pull While Ignoring Local Changes

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.

How to Force Git Pull to Overwrite Everything

Really the ideal way to do this is to not use pull at all, but instead fetch and reset:

git fetch origin master
git reset --hard FETCH_HEAD
git clean -df

(Altering master to whatever branch you want to be following.)

pull is designed around merging changes together in some way, whereas reset is designed around simply making your local copy match a specific commit.

You may want to consider slightly different options to clean depending on your system's needs.