What does it mean when git says a file "needs update"?

Question

I can't for the life of me find any decent explanation of the "[file]: needs update" message that git sometimes spits out from time to time. Even the official git FAQ has explaining this marked as a TODO. If someone could explain A) what it means; and B) how to fix it, I would be extremely grateful.

Sis

Good question, as you said even the GitFaq does not have an answer: git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/… – Pupiparous

You can see #5368234 – Mindimindless

Can you tell exactly which command produces this? And which version of Git? I've tried to remove them from the UI, so recent Git should not tell you this except in places I've forgotten ;-). – Dodder

Answer 1

It means you're trying to merge changes from somewhere, but the changes include modifications to a file that's dirty (currently modified in your working tree). You need to commit your outstanding changes, or stash them, pull/rebase/merge/whatever you're doing to update, and unstash

Magnetograph

It's not actually the pull - it's the merge that's part of the pull. You'll see the same error if you try to merge a local branch with the same problem, and I think other mergey operations (apply, stash apply...) print similar errors if not the same one. – Handbarrow

Ah, thanks. That actually makes sense. I guess I need to make sure I commit changes before checkout out a different branch. – Sis

In case it helps search results, I also ran into this issue trying to do a git svn rebase with a dirty working copy. Stash save, rebase, stash pop, and all was right with the world. – Grecism

The file itself may not be changed - even changing file attributes (like permissions) can cause this. – Kinsley

Answer 2

As others have pointed out, needs update message means that the file is dirty or, in other words, outdated. But instead of doing reset and starting all over again, what can be done is simply git status and then git add <file> if it's on the changed list. Because you could already add the file before, but then changed it. This happened to me, and with this simple add I have solved the problem.

Gutierrez

Answer 3

Log into your production/destination server, cd to the directory containing your application and execute those two commands.

1. Reset to the latest version

WARNING, this will delete all your changes:

git reset --hard HEAD

2. Pull the changes

git pull origin master

Rocca

[git reset --hard HEAD] worked for me. I had committed from a Windows share drive, but my Ubuntu directory wouldn't reflect the commit I'd just made, even though it was the same folder (Z: mapped to /var/www/html/). After running this, [git status] and [git pull] both now show it's up-to-date. – Ohmmeter

This is the solution that worked for me too. I tried to use git subtree using SourceTree on Windows, and it screwed up badly in the process. – Aldarcie

Answer 4

Like the answer to the linked other question says, the message simply means that you have outstanding changes. You also get this e.g. if you stage some changes with git add, then change your mind and do git reset HEAD file with the intention of starting over.

Siloam

git reset HEAD file causes same message to appear – Breastsummer

Answer 5

This error can occur when rebase process make additional changes to files that is not on target branch.

For me the tricky part was with .gitattributes file in my repo. New binary file type was added in another branch but it's handling was forced as text file. When file was downloaded from repo by git, EOLs (it's binary value bytes actually) was replaced - resulting in binary difference.

Adding new entry to handle new file type as binary and retrying whole process solved problem for me.

Pomerania

Answer 6

In my case, I kept getting

assets/ElipseThree.png: needs update
You must edit all merge conflicts and then
mark them as resolved using git add

I had those files in my directory, but they had been renamed in my current branch. So to fix, I ran

$ git mv assets/ElipseThree.png assets/elipseThree.png
$ git add assets/elipseHalfFull.png 
$ git rebase --continue

and it allowed me to continue

Barmy