While attempting to update my dotfiles locally on my MacBook Pro, I
ran into a bit of a dilemma with one of my files that I had edited but never
committed.
Not a big deal, I can just run git stash and apply the changes again later.
No such luck though, when attempting to stash I was advised that the file
needed merged:
% git stash
vim/.vimrc: needs merge
Kind of weird, but okay. Honestly, I don’t really remember what I did to get
into this state, but my next thought was to try to abort the merge, assuming
there was a merge in action:
% git merge --abort
fatal: There is no merge to abort (MERGE_HEAD missing).
So that was a bust. At this point, I made a copy of the locally modified file,
and then attempted to check it out, thinking that would get me back into a state
in which I could pull the latest code:
git checkout vim/.vimrc
error: path 'vim/.vimrc' is unmerged
Back to where we started, with a slightly different error message.
Running out of options, I tried to reset the file, to hopefully blow away any
gremlins in the state that were keeping me from moving forward:
% git reset vim/.vimrc
Unstaged changes after reset:
M vim/.vimrc
So far so good. Evidently I had previously staged the file for commit but
never followed through with it. After doing a reset on the file, I was free to
stash or checkout the offending file, and get on with my day.
