Unstaged changes left after git reset --hard

Question

After git reset --hard, git status gives me files within the Changes not staged for commit: section.

I've also tried git reset ., git checkout -- . and git checkout-index -f -a, to no avail.

So, how can I get rid of those unstaged changes?

This seems to hit only Visual Studio project files. Weird. See this paste: http://pastebin.com/eFZwPn9Z. What is special with those files, is that in .gitattributes I have:

*.sln        eol=crlf
*.vcproj     eol=crlf
*.vcxproj*   eol=crlf

Also, autocrlf is set to false in my global .gitconfig. Could that be somehow relevant?

Answer 1

I had the same problem and it was related to the .gitattributes file. However the file type that caused the problem was not specified in the .gitattributes.

I was able to solve the issue by simply running

git rm .gitattributes
git add -A
git reset --hard

Answer 2

I have resolved this problem using following steps

1. Remove every file from Git's index.

   git rm --cached -r .
   

2. Rewrite the Git index to pick up all the new line endings.

   git reset --hard
   

Solution was part of steps described on Configuring Git to handle line endings

Answer 3

Git won't reset files that aren't on repository. So, you can:

$ git add .
$ git reset --hard

This will stage all changes, which will cause Git to be aware of those files, and then reset them.

If this does not work, you can try to stash and drop your changes:

$ git stash
$ git stash drop

Answer 4

If you use Git for Windows, this is likely your issue

I've had the same problem and stash, hard reset, clean or even all of them was still leaving changes behind. What turned out to be the problem was the x file mode that was not set properly by git. This is a "known issue" with git for windows. The local changes show in gitk and git status as old mode 100755 new mode 100644, without any actual file differences.

The fix is to ignore the file mode:

git config core.filemode false

More info here

Answer 5

Okay, I've kind of solved the problem.

It seemed that the .gitattributes file, containing:

*.sln        eol=crlf
*.vcproj     eol=crlf
*.vcxproj*   eol=crlf

made the project files appear unstaged. I am clueless why that is, and I'm really hoping that someone privy to the ways of git will give us a nice explanation.

My fix was to remove these files, and to add autocrlf = false under [core] in .git/config.

This does not amount to exactly the same thing as the previous configuration, as it requires every dev to have autocrlf = false. I'd like to find a better fix.

EDIT:

I commented the incriminating lines, uncommented them and it worked. What the ... I don't even ... !