.gitignore and “The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by checkout”

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WARNING: it will delete untracked files, so it’s not a great answer to the question being posed.

I hit this message as well. In my case, I didn’t want to keep the files, so this worked for me:

git 2.11 and newer

git clean  -d  -f .

older git

git clean  -d  -f ""

If you also want to remove files ignored by git, then execute the following command.

BE WARNED!!! THIS MOST PROBABLY DESTROYS YOUR PROJECT, USE ONLY IF YOU KNOW 100% WHAT YOU ARE DOING

git 2.11 and newer

git clean  -d  -fx .

older git

git clean  -d  -fx ""

http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-clean.html

  • -x means ignored files are also removed as well as files unknown to git.

  • -d means remove untracked directories in addition to untracked files.

  • -f is required to force it to run.

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