How do I ignore an error on 'git pull' about my local changes would be overwritten by merge?

If you want remove all local changes - including files that are untracked by git - from your working copy, simply stash them:

git stash push --include-untracked

If you don't need them anymore, you now can drop that stash:

git stash drop

If you don't want to stash changes that you already staged - e.g. with git add - then add the option --keep-index. Note however, that this will still prevent merging if those staged changes collide with the ones from upstream.

---

If you want to overwrite only specific parts of your local changes, there are two possibilities:

1. Commit everything you don't want to overwrite and use the method above for the rest.

2. Use git checkout path/to/file/to/revert for the changes you wish to overwrite. Make sure that file is not staged via git reset HEAD path/to/file/to/revert.

Alright with the help of the other two answers I've come up with a direct solution:

git checkout HEAD^ file/to/overwrite
git pull

This works for me to override all local changes and does not require an identity:

git reset --hard
git pull