Switching a branch after aborting current changes in git

Question

I cloned a git repo and then started playing around in its master branch. After a while, I want to ignore the changes I just made (without committing them), and switch to a different branch. However, it stops me from switching because there are uncommitted changes. How do I ignore them without stashing them either? This is what happens:

$ git checkout gh-pages
error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by checkout:
        somefile.txt
Please, commit your changes or stash them before you can switch branches.
Aborting

Solution 1

Option 1

git checkout -f gh-pages

Option 2

git reset --hard     # beware: don't make that a habit
git checkout gh-pages

Solution 2

Just for the sake of completeness, and for those who landed here by searching: Although the OP asks specifically for a solution without stashing, it is worth mentioning that stash is indeed a very nice option:

The command saves your local modifications away and reverts the working directory to match the HEAD commit.

So you can simply

git stash

This is like resetting to HEAD. When being absolutely positively certain that indeed those uncommitted changes are worthless, simply

git stash drop

You can even have multiple stashes etc. as mentioned in the documentation link above.

I would recommend this practice since it puts one in the habit to double-think before resetting without a significant cost.

Solution 3

You can ignore all uncommitted changes.

git reset --hard HEAD

Solution 4

If you have unstaged file, try:

git checkout -- .

Or

git checkout -- filename

Solution 5

If you're really sure that you want to throw away your uncommitted changes (i.e. those that are staged as well as those in your working tree) you can do:

git reset --hard

In general, stashing is often safer

View more solutions

Comments

[Shailen]

Option 1 didn't work. Git was a goliath of a reluctant problem solver. I was forced to make git reset --hard .. a habit. The holy grail of git command that fixes everything.

[sehe]

@shailenTJ You should be a poet :) And rest assured, I use git reset --hard often. But the thing is, it's a powerful weapon and you should not use it without giving it proper thought, as it will lose anything that wasn't committed (or at least added to the index once, and that would be tricky to recover).

[Owl]

Option 2 did not work for me, it just repeats the error. Git is a total nightmare.

[sehe]

I've never seen the error "Git is a total nightmare". Does it say anything else? Is it time to ask your own question, @Owl?

[Owl]

I REALLY want to throw away my changes, it wont let me. I've tried git reset --hard, i've tried stashing and dropping the stash. Helllllp. Save me from this awful versioning software.

[Mark Longair]

@Owl I think it would be best to create a new question for your problem, including the output of git status.

[Owl]

This fixed my problem, thank you. It seems that this issue is either solved by a git checkout -- . or git reset --hard. One of those should fix it.

[zerocog]

git checkout -f gh-pages worked well for me. I had some lingering CRLF files that were fixed in another branch. stash and stash drop still did not let me checkout a different branch. I noticed my CRLF files were still waiting when I returned to the branch after the -f.