WARNING: it will delete untracked files, so it’s not a great answer to the question being posed.
I hit this message as well. In my case, I didn’t want to keep the files, so this worked for me:
git 2.11 and newer
git clean -d -f .
older git
git clean -d -f ""
If you also want to remove files ignored by git, then execute the following command.
BE WARNED!!! THIS MOST PROBABLY DESTROYS YOUR PROJECT, USE ONLY IF YOU KNOW 100% WHAT YOU ARE DOING
git 2.11 and newer
git clean -d -fx .
older git
git clean -d -fx ""
http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-clean.html
-
-x
means ignored files are also removed as well as files unknown to git. -
-d
means remove untracked directories in addition to untracked files. -
-f
is required to force it to run.