Using git, how do you reset the working tree to the state of the index?

Question

Situation:

1. Edit files
2. Add files to the index
3. Edit more files

Now we have three different states. The state of HEAD, the state

Answer 1

git checkout :/ discards all changes in the working tree and replaces it with what's in the index, regardless of the current working directory.

https://git-scm.com/docs/gitglossary#gitglossary-aiddefpathspecapathspec

Answer 2

I tend to use git checkout . which discards all changes from the working directory down. This makes a difference if you're not at the root of the repository.

This command doesn't remove newly created files which is usually a good thing. If you need to do this then you can use git clean as well.

Answer 3

You can use git stash save --keep-index to do this. After saving the stash, you can use git stash drop if you don't want to keep it around.

Answer 4

You can use git-checkout-index. Be aware that you need to add

• -f to force it to overwrite existing files, or
• -f -a to enforce overwriting all paths in the index.