How do I force an overwrite of local files on a git pull?
The scenario is the following:
Despite the original question, the top answers can cause problems for people who have a similar problem, but don't want to lose their local files. For example, see Al-Punk and crizCraig's comments.
The following version commits your local changes to a temporary branch (tmp), checks out the original branch (which I'm assuming is master) and merges the updates. You could do this with stash, but I've found it's usually easier to simply use the branch / merge approach.
git checkout -b tmp
git add *; git commit -am "my temporary files"
git checkout master
git fetch origin master
git merge -s recursive -X theirs origin master
where we assume the other repository is origin master.