How do I force “git pull” to overwrite local files?

Question

How do I force an overwrite of local files on a git pull?

The scenario is the following:

• A team member is modifying the t

Answer 1

⚠ Important: If you have any local changes, they will be lost. With or without --hard option, any local commits that haven't been pushed will be lost.^[*]

If you have any files that are not tracked by Git (e.g. uploaded user content), these files will not be affected.

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First, run a fetch to update all origin/ refs to latest:

git fetch --all

Backup your current branch:

git checkout -b backup-master

Then, you have two options:

git reset --hard origin/master

OR If you are on some other branch:

git reset --hard origin/

Explanation:

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

Then the 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

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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, however (even staged), will be lost. Make sure to stash and commit anything you need. For that you can run the following:

git stash

And then to reapply these uncommitted changes:

git stash pop