Brew update failed: untracked working tree files would be overwritten by merge

Question

Trying to update Homebrew with brew update I got the following error

error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwrittenby me         


        

Answer 1

This is caused by an old bug in the update code that has long since been fixed. However, the nature of the bug requires that you do the following:

cd $(brew --repository)
git reset --hard FETCH_HEAD

If brew doctor still complains about uncommitted modifications, also run this command:

cd $(brew --repository)    
git clean -fd