Git asks to commit or stash, but there's nothing to commit

Question

While trying to pull from a remote branch I get an error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge: app/..../_shared.scss Git is asking to commit the file or to stash.

The problem is - I've already done git add . and git commit -am "trying to remove the error". The problem persist.

git status says: "nothing to commit (working directory clean)"

Does anyone know how to get rid of it?

ANSWER: Move the offending file to some other location. Then delete the offending file from your tree. Pull again. then diff the changes from your offending file over the file you just pulled. hack, but it works.

Note: I found the answer here (Git asks me to commit or stash even those changes are commited), but since no one up voted it in the original thought I should repost. It's a hack, but it's the fastest route to resolution.

Answer 1

If git status reported the working directory clean, I'd bet you have an ignored file in your working directory that somebody else added to the remote repo. You could confirm that with git diff --stat your-branch remote-name/remote-branch and git ls-files -i --exclude-standard.

The solution would be to remove the file from the ignore file (so git status shows it as an untracked file), stash it with the --include-untracked option, pull the changes from your remote, and apply the stash to merge your changes back in.