Handle the Error “Please Commit Your Changes or Stash Them Before You Can Merge” In Git

Every programmer, developer, beginner, and programming student knows about the Git they can create in the Github repository. Github is an online platform for software development, it is widely used for tracking, storing, and collaborating software projects. It enables you as well as others to work on a project. Your team can easily access the projects shared on Github remotely, which makes it easier to edit. Showcasing projects is also an option on Github that let you share your code with others, be it programmers, non-programmers, or students. When you are working on Git, you may experience different errors, and “Please commit your changes or Stash them before you can merge” In Git is one of those.

Errors are common, so there is no need to worry when you face one. The determination to crack the code makes you code well by removing the error. As you came here to solve the error, we give you all the information and solution to help you. Check out how the error pops up

How the error shows up

You get the error message when changes have been made to the local machine. After the changes, pushing it to the remote GitHub repository can return the error when anyone pulls the changes from that remote.

When using the following command

git pull

You get into the following error

error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge:;
Please, commit your changes or stash them before you can merge.

Now that you know how you land up in the error. Check out how to fix it

How To Solve the Error “Please commit your changes or Stash them before you can merge” In Git

To get rid of the error, you need to avoid the local modification merging as Git has the feature to defend against any unwanted code changes. We have a step-wise solution that can help you resolve the error warning.

Step 1 – Try to commit the changes

The first step, to begin with, is to commit to the changes that have been made in the directory of your project. In order to commit, you can use the below command

git commit -m "Your message"

Step 2 – Temporary Store the changes

The next step toward the error-solving process is to use the stack to store the changes. You can do it using the below command

git stash

Step 3 – Pull the code from the repository

Once the stacking is done, you need to pull the code from the remote repository. The command that can help you do this step is given below

git pull <remote name> <remote branch name> (or) switch branch

Step 4 – Use pop

In the last step, you just need to pop the changes that you have saved in the stack. To pop, you need to use the following command

git stash pop

These steps can resolve the error and it will not return when you try to pull the changes again remotely.

Conclusion

We have discussed how to resolve the error “Please commit your changes or Stash them before you can merge” In Git. You can simply implement the steps mentioned above to fix the error.

I hope you find it useful!