git · Git
The message
Please commit your changes or stash them before you merge.
What it means
Files you have uncommitted edits in are also touched by the commits coming in, and git chose to stop rather than overwrite them. It appears when you pull or merge with a dirty working tree. git stash push -u sets those edits aside so the merge can run, and -u includes untracked files as well; but git stash pop can conflict when you bring them back, and a stash is invisible next to your branches and easy to forget and lose — making a throwaway commit instead is the safer habit.
The fix
git stash push -u- Printed by
- git
- Git
- 29
Almost every git error is a refusal that means "doing that from this state would lose something"; fatal: means git stopped without changing anything, and the hint: lines under the first line usually carry the actual remedy.
Reading an error message
- Read from the first line down. The lower you go the more it is about the tool’s internals; the cause is usually at the top.
- If there is a file and a line number, start there — not the top stack frame, but the topmost line that names a file you wrote.
- Search the message verbatim, but strip your own paths and variable names first; those are what stop the search from matching.
- The same condition is worded differently across tool versions. If results look wrong, add the version number to the query.
- Before pasting a fix, check what it throws away. Some of these cannot be undone.
Common questions
Q. What does “Please commit your changes or stash them before you merge.” mean?
Files you have uncommitted edits in are also touched by the commits coming in, and git chose to stop rather than overwrite them. It appears when you pull or merge with a dirty working tree. git stash push -u sets those edits aside so the merge can run, and -u includes untracked files as well; but git stash pop can conflict when you bring them back, and a stash is invisible next to your branches and easy to forget and lose — making a throwaway commit instead is the safer habit.
Q. How do I fix it?
git stash push -u — before running it, check the explanation above for what this command discards.
Q. Which tool prints this?
git. It sits under Git, and the message runs to 10 words.