Git Error: You need to Resolve your Current Index First [Fixed Completely]

A lot of people have been getting the ‘error: you need to resolve your current index first‘ issue with Git and this usually occurs while trying to merge branches and this lists the merge conflict or failure. Most likely, this error occurs due to a merge conflict or a merge failed issue.

Before you start:

1. Open your code editor and execute the following commands one by one to make sure that all your changes are committed before you carry out a merge.

   $ git add
   $ git commit -m 'commit message'

Solution 1: Revert your Merge

1. Type in the following command in the code editor and hit enter to abort and revert the merge.

   $ git reset --merge

2.  If the above command doesn’t resolve the error, you can revert every merge to its previous commit by executing the following command.

   $ git reset --hard HEAD

Solution 2: Merge the current branch into the Head branch

1. Type the following command and hit enter on the keyboard to switch to the current branch.

   git checkout <>

2. Now create a merge commit that discards everything from the master branch and keeps everything in your recent branch by executing the following command.

    git merge -s ours master

3.  Now execute the following command to switch back to the master branch.

   git checkout master

4. Finally, merge both the branches by executing the following command in your code editor.

   git merge <>

Solution 3: Resolve merge conflict

1. Execute the following command in the code editor to open the file you are having trouble with:

   $ vim /path/to/file_with_conflict

2. Now type the following command and hit enter to execute it:

   $ git commit -a -m 'commit message'

Solution 4: Delete the faulty branch

1. If your branch has a lot of conflicts then delete the branch by executing the following command and make a new branch from the start.

   git checkout -f <>

Hopefully after following the guide throughout you’d be able to rectify the error but if you need any further detail and information regarding this issue click here.