Re: Files different for me

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Feb 25, 2009, 18:04 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.00.0902250957260.3111@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <450196A1AAAE4B42A00A8B27A59278E709E047DE@EXCHANGE.trad.tradestation.com>

On Wed, 25 Feb 2009, John Dlugosz wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

>
> I'm working with a group, and using git for source code.  I need to 
> change a couple files temporarily and just for me.  I thought, "that's 
> easy", just don't stage them when I check in changes.  But, what do I do 
> when I pull changes from others?  I think it will complain that I have 
> unsaved changes.

If your changes do not touch any of the files that the "git pull" updates, then everything is fine. The pull will just work, and your changes will still exists in your tree. This is not an accident - git was very much designed to work that way, because it's a common usage case for me.

I often have some trivial small changes in my tree (like a pending change to the top-level Makefile for the next version number that I just haven't committed yet - just a reminder to myself that I'm soon about to release another -rc). And I still want to continue to do "git pull" to fetch stuff, or even "git am -s" to apply patches.

HOWEVER. If the pull actually wants to modify a file that you have changed (ie that same file was changed in the remote), then "git pull" will fail gracefully after having done the fetch, saying something like

	Entry 'file-name' not uptodate. Cannot merge.

and at that point you have to decide whethe you want to commit the change, "stash" it, or just undo it. Or whether you don't want to do the merge yet because you're still working on your own changes, and don't want the distraction.

		Linus