Fix Error You Need To Resolve Your Current Index First

Error: You Need To Resolve Your Current Index First

This type error occurs in Github. The error statement ‘You need to resolve your current index first’ occurs when a merge conflict happen in the git. The issue will stay unless you solve the conflict. Due to this error, a user can’t be able to check another branch. There is another reason when this error message occurs. Whenever there is a conflict with the file and merging, the same error occurs.

The error looks like this,

Introduction to Git

Now, if you are beginner in Git, terms like merge, files, conflict etc must be sounding unfamiliar to like. Let’s first understand what Git is. Git is a version control platform which allows several people to work on files simultaneously and push their local copy of the code to the one stored in the cloud. This way if you change some downloaded (or already pushed) code and push it again to the cloud, the changes will be overwritten in the cloud by your local copy.

Now, while using Git we have to go through several branches. One such branch is master branch and remaining other branches. The given error occurs when we switch from one branch to other due to the conflict in the files present in current branches.

Let’s see two main reasons of this error,

• Before moving to other branch if you didn’t merge the files, this conflict arrives.
• Since, there are conflict in the current branch you can’t move to targeted branch. You can’t even push code.

Solution 1. Solving the merge conflict

In some cases, the merge is automatically resolved by the git itself but if it’s not happening than there are chances that the file leaves an index and a special working tree with a special state will be made which will help you to get the information and to solve the issue. Git automatically marks the files in special indices which are conflicted. Now, until you resolve the problem, you will keep receiving the same error. You need to update the index as well.

S.1 look the files which are conflicted as they have been mentioned with special indexes. Make changes in them as per the files.

S.2 Once you resolved all the conflicts in the first step, add the file and commit.

$ git add file.txt

$ git commit

You can even add your comment through git,

$ git commit –m “This is Appuals Git repository”

S.3 Now, check by changing the branch if the problem is resolved or not.

Solution 2. Undo or revert the merges you have made

Several merges can make the things messy and the whole project burry under confusions and conflicts. And since you made the merges, you are blamed for the things happening. Now, what can you do? In these cases, first you need to identify which merging process has created the situation of confusions and conflicts. Once you noticed, you can simply revert the process that is commit. This will take the whole process to the state when no merge was made.

You can’t always repair the things. Thus, it is better to revert your decisions. Now, how can we do that? Let’s see,

To perform revert action, type the following codes,

$ git reset -–merge

The above command will reset the index and make updates in the working tree according to difference between the head and the commit. Though, those files which are different between the index and the working tree will be kept same.

The following command will help in reverting the head,

$ git revert HEAD

Now, if you want to perform the same actions to other exact merge commits. You just need to add some specific parameters in the same code. In this context, the SHA1 hash of the merge commit will be useful and will be used.

As per the command, -m will be followed by the 1 indicates that we want to keep with the branch we are merging into which is also known as parent side of the branch. The outcome of this revert is that Git will create a new commit that rolls back the changes from the merge.

The command will look like,

$ git revert -m 1 dd8d6f587fa24327d5f5afd6fa8c3e604189c8d4>

This is the solution of error "You Need To Resolve Your Current Index First".