Cannot Pull b/c "You have unstaged changes", but status says there are no changes

Question

I'm working with a developer here who is seeing a weird issue that I've never encountered before. He's working on a repository and needs to pull the latest changes from someone else before he can push. All of his changes are committed.

$ git pull
Cannot pull with rebase: You have unstaged changes.
Please commit or stash them.

Which seems reasonable enough until...

$ git status
# On branch master
# Your branch and 'origin/master' have diverged,
# and have 3 and 1 different commit each, respectively.
#
nothing to commit (working directory clean)

Say what?

I've tried git reset --hard HEAD before pulling, but the pull still fails.

Only one guy is seeing this and he's on a Mac (OSX 10.6.8). Any ideas? I'm about to pull my hair out.

What value do you get if you run `git config branch.autosetuprebase`? If it is set to `always` that might explain what is happening here. — ThomasW, Apr 04 '13 at 08:22

Peter van der Does · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-04T18:14:00.073

26

Instead of

git pull

try

git fetch
git rebase -p origin/master

If that doesn't work you can try

git pull --no-rebase

How to check why this message occurs

Make sure you on a branch, not a detached head. Rebasing doesn't work on a detached head.

Run the following commands, the result should be no output.

git update-index -q --ignore-submodules --refresh
git diff-files --ignore-submodules
git diff-index --cached --ignore-submodules HEAD --

edited Dec 04 '12 at 18:14

answered Dec 04 '12 at 01:16

Peter van der Does

14,018
4
38
42

3

Interesting. Only the merge (`git pull --no-rebase`) worked. Any idea why a merge would work, but a rebase wouldn't given the reason that's being stated and the apparent working directory status? Going to mark this answered, but I'd like to understand more so I can try to fix his underlying issue. Thanks for your help. – Rob Wilkerson Dec 04 '12 at 12:20
@RobWilkerson I updated the solution with some checks you can run why you got this message. – Peter van der Does Dec 04 '12 at 13:08
Meant to add that output is empty as expected. – Rob Wilkerson Dec 04 '12 at 18:01
Argh my mistake, the git diff files should be run without --quiet – Peter van der Does Dec 04 '12 at 18:11
"Rebasing doesn't work on a detached head." says who? Works for me all the time. – donquixote Oct 13 '16 at 16:29

Tomasz · Answer 2 · 2013-05-22T09:16:51.527

9

Are you working on local filesystem or nfs share?

I had exactly the same problem when I was working on nfs share.

I have added noatime option to the mount command and it helped:

mount -t nfs -o noatime,... device dir

edited May 22 '13 at 09:16

answered May 22 '13 at 09:10

Tomasz

91
1
2

1

Exactly my case. Thank you! – 0x8BADF00D Jun 03 '20 at 03:29

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 15 '19 at 13:42

1

for me issue was with files in secure folder

only this command has shown that there are files unstaged
```
git diff-files --ignore-submodules
```
de-configure git-crypt and re-encrypt files in work tree
```
git-crypt lock
```

answered Jul 15 '19 at 13:42

srghma

4,770
2
38
54

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 05 '13 at 07:04

0

You can try for $ git stash then try for git pull.

answered Sep 05 '13 at 07:04

Raje

3,285
15
50
70

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 13 '20 at 10:32

0

I had this issue when I tried to rebase a repo owned by root (and I was an unprivileged user).

answered Apr 13 '20 at 10:32

Chris Beach

4,302
2
31
50

score -1 · Answer 6 · edited Jul 18 '17 at 04:00

-1

Looks like there might be a rebase in progress. Try running git rebase --abort first.

More forceful methods to clean out the local include

Delete all files in the working directory (excluding the .git directory, of course)
git clean -d -x -f (-d: directories, -x: ignored files, -f: force. Replace -f with -n for dry run)

And then follow up with a git reset --hard and git checkout.

One more thought is to try a git reset --hard HEAD~N - i.e resetting a number of commits back, and hoping the pull will work and fast-forward the local.

edited Jul 18 '17 at 04:00

phuclv

37,963
15
156
475

answered Dec 03 '12 at 21:58

Chamila Chulatunga

4,856
15
17

Thanks, @chamila_c, but I've tried that as part of my trial and error campaign. No joy. – Rob Wilkerson Dec 03 '12 at 22:44
How about a 'git fetch' - does that at least update the local copy of the remote? – Chamila Chulatunga Dec 04 '12 at 00:01
`git fetch` works fine, but unfortunately has no impact when I try a later pull. – Rob Wilkerson Dec 04 '12 at 12:07
See my response to Peter van der Does. In fact a merge (`git pull --no-rebase`) does work, but I'd love to understand why. Seems to me that he's still got something funky going on in his repo that I'd like to get sorted out so he can rebase again. – Rob Wilkerson Dec 04 '12 at 12:22

Cannot Pull b/c "You have unstaged changes", but status says there are no changes

6 Answers6

Linked