I was working on a git branch and was ready to commit my changes, so I made a commit with a useful commit message. I then absentmindedly made minor changes to the code that are not worth keeping. I now want to change branches, but git gives me,

error: You have local changes to "X"; cannot switch branches.

Can I change branches without committing? If so, how can I set this up? If not, how do I get out of this problem? I want to ignore the minor changes without committing and just change branches.

16 Answers

You need a clean state to change branches. The branch checkout will only be allowed if it does not affect the 'dirty files' (as Charles Bailey remarks in the comments).

Otherwise, you should either:

• stash your current change or
• reset --hard HEAD (if you do not mind losing those minor changes) or
• checkout -f (When switching branches, proceed even if the index or the working tree differs from HEAD. This is used to throw away local changes. )

Or, more recently:

• With Git 2.23 (August 2019) and the new command git switch:
  git switch -f <branch-name>
  (-f is short for --force, which is an alias for --discard-changes)

Proceed even if the index or the working tree differs from HEAD.
Both the index and working tree are restored to match the switching target.

This differs from git switch -m <branch-name>, which triggers a three-way merge between the current branch, your working tree contents, and the new branch is done: you won't loose your work in progress that way.

If you want to discard the changes,

git checkout -- <file> git checkout branch 

If you want to keep the changes,

git stash save git checkout branch git stash pop 

well, it should be

git stash save git checkout branch // do something git checkout oldbranch git stash pop 

Follow,

$: git checkout -f $: git checkout next_branch 

Note that if you've merged remote branches or have local commits and want to go back to the remote HEAD you must do:

git reset --hard origin/HEAD 

HEAD alone will only refer to the local commit/merge -- several times I have forgotten that when resetting and end up with "your repository is X commits ahead.." when I fully intended to nuke ALL changes/commits and return to the remote branch.

None of these answers helped me because I still had untracked files even after reset and stash. I had to do:

git reset --hard HEAD git clean -d -f 

git checkout -f your_branch_name

git checkout -f your_branch_name 

if you have troubles reverting changes:

git checkout . 

if you want to remove untracked directories and files:

git clean -fd 

If you have made changes to files that Git also needs to change when switching branches, it won't let you. To discard working changes, use:

git reset --hard HEAD 

Then, you will be able to switch branches.

Follow these steps:

1. Git stash save will save all your changes even if you switch between branches.

git stash save 

2. Git checkout any other branch, now since you saved your changes you can move around any branch. The above command will make sure that your changes are saved.

git checkout branch 

3. Now when you come back to the branch use this command to get all your changes back.

git stash pop 

switching to a new branch losing changes:

git checkout -b YOUR_NEW_BRANCH_NAME --force 

switching to an existing branch losing changes:

git checkout YOUR_BRANCH --force 

Easy Answer:

is to force checkout a branch

git checkout -f <branch_name> 

Force checking out a branch is telling git to drop all changes you've made in the current branch, and checkout out the desired one.

or in case you're checking out a commit

git checkout -f <commit-hash> 

"thought that I could change branches without committing. If so, how can I set this up? If not, how do I get out of this problem?"

The answer to that is No, that's literally the philosophy of Git that you keep track of all changes, and that each node (i.e. commit) has to be up-to-date with the latest changes you've made, unless you've made a new commit of course.

You decided to keep changes?

Then stash them using

git stash 

and then to unstash your changes in the desired branch, use

git stash apply 

which will apply you changes but keep them in the stash queue too. If you don't want to keep them in the stash stack, then pop them using

git stash pop 

That's the equivalent of apply and then drop

If you want to keep the changes and change the branch in a single line command

git stash && git checkout <branch_name> && git stash pop 

Move uncommited changes to a new branch

I created a .gitconfig alias for this:

[alias] spcosp = !"git stash push && git checkout \"$@\" && git stash pop --index #" 

To change to new-branch-name, use:

git spcosp new-branch-name 

And any non-commited file and index changes will be kept.

For your mental calmness (to have much easier access to changes you have left uncomitted doing a branch switch)

Before switching:

git checkout <next_branch> 

use

git stash save "brief description of changes" 

instead of the default:

git stash // or git stash save 

This pays off if your git stash list is a longer list and must switch back to some previous idea started somewhere there.

Close terminal, delete the folder where your project is, then clone again your project and voilá.

To switch to other branch without committing the changes when git stash doesn't work. You can use the below command:

git checkout -f branch-name