How to replace local branch with remote branch entirely in Git?

Question

I have two branches:

1. local branch (the one which I work with)
2. remote branch (public, only well-tested commits go there)

Recently I seriously messed up my local branch.

How would I replace the local branch entirely with the remote one, so I can continue my work from where the remote branch is now?

I have already searched SO and checking out to the remote branch locally does not have any effect.

Answer 1

1. Make sure you've checked out the branch you're replacing (from Zoltán's comment).

2. Assuming that master is the local branch you're replacing, and that "origin/master" is the remote branch you want to reset to:

   git reset --hard origin/master
   

This updates your local HEAD branch to be the same revision as origin/master, and --hard will sync this change into the index and workspace as well.

Answer 2

I'm kind of surprised no one mentioned this yet; I use it nearly every day:

git reset --hard @{u}

Basically, @{u} is just shorthand for the upstream branch that your current branch is tracking. For example, this typically equates to origin/[my-current-branch-name]. It's nice because it's branch agnostic.

Make sure to git fetch first to get the latest copy of the remote branch.

Side Note: In most shells the command will work as written, but if you're using Git in PowerShell or csh you'll need to escape the special characters first, though I've also confirmed it works as a string in both, so for example:

git reset --hard '@{u}'

Answer 3

That's as easy as three steps:

1. Delete your local branch: git branch -d local_branch

2. Fetch the latest remote branch: git fetch origin remote_branch

3. Rebuild the local branch based on the remote one:

   git checkout -b local_branch origin/remote_branch

Answer 4

git branch -D <branch-name>
git fetch <remote> <branch-name>
git checkout -b <branch-name> --track <remote>/<branch-name>

Answer 5

Replace everything with the remote branch; but, only from the same commit your local branch is on:

git reset --hard origin/some-branch

OR, get the latest from the remote branch and replace everything:

git fetch origin some-branch
git reset --hard FETCH_HEAD

As an aside, if needed, you can wipe out untracked files & directories that you haven't committed yet:

git clean -fd

Answer 6

The safest and most complete way to replace the current local branch with the remote:

git stash
git merge --abort
git rebase --abort
git branch -M yourBranch replaced_yourBranch
git fetch origin yourBranch:yourBranch
git checkout yourBranch

The stash line saves the changes that you have not committed. The branch line moves your branch to a different name, freeing up the original name. The fetch line retrieves the latest copy of the remote. The checkout line recreates the original branch as a tracking branch.

Or as a bash function:

replaceWithRemote() {
    yourBranch=${1:-`git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD`}
    git stash
    git merge --abort
    git rebase --abort
    git branch -M ${yourBranch} replaced_${yourBranch}_`git rev-parse --short HEAD`
    git fetch origin ${yourBranch}:${yourBranch}
    git checkout ${yourBranch}
}

which renames the current branch to something like replaced_master_98d258f.

Answer 7

It can be done multiple ways, continuing to edit this answer for spreading better knowledge perspective.

1) Reset hard

If you are working from remote develop branch, you can reset HEAD to the last commit on remote branch as below:

git reset --hard origin/develop

2) Delete current branch, and checkout again from the remote repository

Considering, you are working on develop branch in local repo, that syncs with remote/develop branch, you can do as below:

git branch -D develop
git checkout -b develop origin/develop

3) Abort Merge

If you are in-between a bad merge (mistakenly done with wrong branch), and wanted to avoid the merge to go back to the branch latest as below:

git merge --abort

4) Abort Rebase

If you are in-between a bad rebase, you can abort the rebase request as below:

git rebase --abort

Answer 8

You can do as @Hugo of @Laurent said, or you can use git rebase to delete the commits you want to get rid off, if you know which ones. I tend to use git rebase -i head~N (where N is a number, allowing you to manipulate the last N commits) for this kind of operations.

Answer 9

The selected answer is absolutely correct, however it did not leave me with the latest commit/pushes ...

So for me:

git reset --hard dev/jobmanager-tools
git pull  ( did not work as git was not sure what branch i wanted)

Since I know I want to temporarily set my upstream branch for a few weeks to a specific branch ( same as the one i switched to / checked out earlier and did a hard reset on )

So AFTER reset

git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/dev/jobmanager-tools
git pull
git status    ( says--> on branch  dev/jobmanager-tools 

Answer 10

The way I did it was by deleting the local branch and making a git pull:

git branch -d local-branch-name

git pull

Answer 11

If you want to update branch that is not currently checked out you can do:

git fetch -f origin rbranch:lbranch

Answer 12

git checkout .

i always use this command to replace my local changes with repository changes. git checkout space dot.

Answer 13

1. git fetch origin remote_branch
2. git reset --hard FETCH_HEAD

Answer 14

Considering, you are working on develop branch in local repo, that override local with remote/develop branch, you can do as below:

git fetch origin
git checkout -B develop origin/develop

Answer 15

As provided in chosen explanation, git reset is good. But nowadays we often use sub-modules: repositories inside repositories. For example, you if you use ZF3 and jQuery in your project you most probably want them to be cloned from their original repositories. In such case git reset is not enough. We need to update submodules to that exact version that are defined in our repository:

git checkout master
git fetch origin master
git reset --hard origin/master
git pull

git submodule foreach git submodule update

git status

it is the same as you will come (cd) recursively to the working directory of each sub-module and will run:

git submodule update

And it's very different from

git checkout master
git pull

because sub-modules point not to branch but to the commit.

In that cases when you manually checkout some branch for 1 or more submodules you can run

git submodule foreach git pull

Answer 16

git reset --hard
git clean -fd

This worked for me - clean showed all the files it deleted too. If it tells you you'll lose changes, you need to stash.

Answer 17

Put the following command in your ~/.gitconfig file

[alias]
    override = "!f() { git fetch $1 && git reset --hard $1/$2 ; }; f"

Then assuming you have added a remote url called fork

git remote add fork [email protected]/xyz

you can completely override local <branch_name> with remote fork/<branch_name> like so:

git override fork <branch_name>

Answer 18

The ugly but simpler way: delete your local folder, and clone the remote repository again.