This question is similar to this one, but more specific.
I have a project with two branches (staging
and beta
).
I develop on staging
, and use the master
branch to fix bugs. So if I'm working on staging and I see an error, I change to master
branch:
git checkout master
and do the stuff:
git add fileToAdd
git commit -m "bug fixed"
and then I merge with both branches:
git checkout staging
git merge master
git checkout beta
git merge beta
And doesn't matter if there are other files on the working tree.
But now, when I try to change to the master
branch, I'm getting an error:
error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by checkout:
src/Pro/ConvocationBundle/Controller/DefaultController.php
Please, commit your changes or stash them before you can switch branches.
Aborting
I thought that I should remove the file from the staging area:
git reset HEAD src/Pro/ConvocationBundle/Controller/DefaultController.php
but I'm getting the same error. If I do git status
I get No changes to commit
Your error appears when you have modified a file and the branch that you are switching to has changes for this file too (from latest merge point).
Your options, as I see it, are - commit, and then amend this commit with extra changes (you can modify commits in git, as long as they're not push
ed); or - use stash:
git stash save your-file-name
git checkout master
# do whatever you had to do with master
git checkout staging
git stash pop
git stash save
will create stash that contains your changes, but it isn't associated with any commit or even branch. git stash pop
will apply latest stash entry to your current branch, restoring saved changes and removing it from stash.
I encountered the same problem and solved it by
git checkout -f branch
and its specification is rather clear.
-f, --force
When switching branches, proceed even if the index or the working
tree differs from HEAD. This is used to throw away local changes.
When checking out paths from the index, do not fail upon unmerged
entries; instead, unmerged entries are ignored.
You can force checkout your branch, if you do not want to commit your local changes.
git checkout -f branch_name
I encountered the same problem and solved it by
git checkout -f branch
Well, be careful with the -f
switch. You will lose any uncommitted changes if you use the -f
switch. While there may be some use cases where it is helpful to use -f
, in most cases, you may want to stash
your changes and then switch
branches. The stashing
procedure is explained above.
You can commit in the current branch, checkout to another branch, and finally cherry-pick that commit (in lieu of merge).