Unlink of file failed

Question

I\'m trying to do a git pull and I get the following error:

Unlink of file \'lib/xxx.jar\' failed. Should I try again? (y/n)

No

Answer 1

The problem is because you're having some program that handling these files. I have an suggestion that you should use the Unlocker to find the program that's handling it:

Unlocker

Answer 2

Closed Visual Studio and Rubymine and didn't get the error again. One of them was the culprit.

Answer 3

For me, it was because Visual Studio was trying to reload all of the changed files from the pull. Have visual studio refresh, then run git gc.

Answer 4

I have had this happen on Windows XP, both with the message stuck in a loop, and being able to be cleared by replying.

The stuck-in-a-loop occurence was cleared by closing the Git-GUI. (I was running git merge -i in a bash shell.)

The other occurences happened possibly due to the large number of files in my repository. It happened mainly with .cod files, which I later exclude from version control. (I do have a reason for intially tracking them.) I believe the cause might be related to the rate at which Git uses file handles.

I wonder if the able-to-be-cleared-by-replying problem is Windows related, as two previous posters have mentioned Windows, and no one has said they have the problem with other operating systems.

Answer 5

In my case I had an old method of pruning tags causing the issue. I solved it by unsetting the original:

git config --global --unset remote.origin.fetch '\+refs/tags/\*:refs/tags/\*'

then adding this to prune deleted branches on the server:

git config --global fetch.pruneTags true

Answer 6

Close your IDE then do git pull . It will work.