Please commit your changes or stash them before you switch branches. aborting

Question

Problem :

I made some of the updates on my local machine, pushed them to the remote repository, and now I want to pull my changes to the server and I get a message;

error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge:

wp-content/w3tc-config/master.php

Please, commit your changes or stash them before you can merge.

So I ran the below command,

git checkout -- wp-content/w3tc-config/master.php

And tried again and I got a same message. I am assuming that the w3tc changed something in a config file on a server. I don't care whether a local copy or remote copy goes on a server (I suppose a remote one is the best), I just want to be able to merge a rest of my changes (plugin updates).

Any clues how can I resolve it?

Answer 1

You can not  merge with your local modifications. Git protects you from losing the potentially important changes.

You have below three options:

· Commit your change using

git commit -m "My message"

· Stash your change using.

Stashing acts as the stack, where you can push the changes, and you pop them in a reverse order.

To stash it, type

git stash

Do a merge, and then pull a stash:

git stash pop

· Discard your local changes

using the git reset --hard
or the git checkout -t -f remote/branch

Or: Discard your local changes for the specific file

using the git checkout filename