Can I tell git pull to overwrite instead of merge?

Question

As far as I see, git pull someRemote master tries to merge the remote branch into mine.

Is there a way to say \"Completely discard my stuff, just make m

Answer 1

If you want to keep your current master branch but register a new version (mirroring the remote branch), you can;

• register a merge filter driver (just for this merge: a keepTheir one)
• do a git pull --no-commit
• check if there aren't extra files that need to be removed (files in your master that were not present in the remote branch)
• commit

Answer 2

Sounds like you're after git checkout, which will discard your local changes to a path.

You can revert your changes using checkout:

git checkout myfile.h

will restore myfile.h from the index

http://git-scm.com/docs/git-checkout

Answer 3

First, rename your master branch to something else:

git branch -m master my_old_master

Then, create a new master:

git checkout -b master someRemote

The great thing about Git's branch names is that they aren't actual places themselves, they're just pointers to places (where a "place" is a SHA1 commit id).