Solution for git modifying unintended files

I’m using MacOS and when I need to work with a project in my company (a very big repo). After cloned it to my laptop, I checked out the develop branch. Immediately, I saw some files were being modified even though I haven’t touched to them yet.

It showed some ttf files, and even a java file were modified. I have tried many different ways to “reset” those files

git reset --hard

or

git checkout -- .

but these command didn’t work.

Git automatically modified files unexpectedly after checking out. And I can’t discard these files from the commit.

Initial Trying

Initially, I thought the issue was something with having a core.autocrlf that it can change EOL (end of lines) characters even for (binary) documents that should not be touched.

Thus, I tried

git config --global core.autocrlf false

and then cloned again the repo. I also tried to add .gitattributes file for that. However the problem was still insisted.

Solution

After investigating, I found out the problem was because of the file system of MacOS, and we need to store the repo in a case sensitive disk format.

1. Open Disk Utilities
2. Click on + sign
3. Choose APFS (Case Sensitive)
4. Type any «name»
5. Click on size option
6. Put maybe 50 GB or even 10 GB is enough for both
7. Copy the repo or clone it again to /Volumes/«name»
8. Then you can git stash there (if needed)

This solution worked for me, I hope it will solve your similar issue as well.