Question

I have changes in my working directory that I’m trying to discard (reset to the current indexed version of the files), however, git checkout -- <file> will not discard the changes.
I’ve attempted to manually remove the files (rm -r files) then run git checkout -- ., which displays the files as modified again.

$ git checkout -- .
$ git status
# On branch master
# Changes not staged for commit:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#   modified:   files/Hulk.png
#   modified:   files/Hulk_2.png
#
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

Running git diff shows the files are modified…

diff --git a/files/Hulk.png b/files/Hulk.png
index 1c256cb..1d37fe0 100644
Binary files a/files/Hulk.png and b/files/Hulk.png differ
diff --git a/files/Hulk_2.png b/files/Hulk_2.png
index 1c256cb..0717199 100644
Binary files a/files/Hulk_2.png and b/files/Hulk_2.png differ

NOTE: Some people have said to run git checkout ., however this will achieve the same result as git checkout -- .. The -- is just a notation used in the git checkout command to differentiate treeish/commit points from files/paths.

OS: OSX 10.6
Git: 1.7.10.2

Answer 1

The cause for this was due to multiple files with the same name but different cases. In OSX, which is case-insensitive, doesn’t like multiple files with the same name but different cases. It views them as the same file.
To fix this, I ran git mv (or just mv) to a temporary filename, added the temp files, which allowed git to remove the old/incorrectly named versions, then a second commit to name them back.
This could also be corrected on a filesystem which allows different files with the same name to be different cases.