git is showing unmerged paths: both modified

Question

I have a visual studio project which uses git. I don't normally use VS for my work - this is a side project - I normally work from the command line and I'm a git novice anyway. I must've done something in visual studio - accidentally hit a key combo or clicked on something - I was looking at the other monitor so I didn't see what triggered it and I only noticed when the code didn't run. I looked in VS and now I have this appearing in my source code:

and when I ran git status I got four sections:

Changes to be committed:
    modified:   file_1
    modified:   file_2
Unmerged paths:
    both modified:   file_3
Changes not staged for commit:
    modified:   file_1
    modified:   file_2
Untracked files:
    file_4
    file_5
    file_6

I wasn't intending to do anything and it's broken my code - it won't run. Can anyone tell what I did and how to undo it?

VS 2022 - Version 17.14.19
git version 2.47.1.windows.2

An unmerged path is a conflicted file, which could be caused by git merge, git rebase, git cherry-pick and other commands that apply changes. git status tells which command it is. You could either abort the process by git $verb --abort or resolve the conflicts. For a binary or a text, you could either take ours version or theirs version. For a text, you could also open it and find the conflicting marks (<<<<<<<, ======, >>>>>> by default) and edit it as you want it to be. — ElpieKay
– ElpieKay, Commented 2 days ago

LeGEC · Accepted Answer · 2025-11-20 08:26:15Z

1

One other action which may trigger merge conflicts is: git stash apply (or git stash pop) -- could this be the action that you triggered from VS ?

You may inspect the content of your topmost stash with: git stash show and see if the list of modified files is related to the files that are reported as staged (when a conflict occurs in this situation, all files modified by applying the stash are left in the staging area) or conflicting.

If you convince yourself that what you see is an attempt to apply the stashed content: figure out whether you want to keep the changes or not on each file.

Note that: in the end, what is important is the actual content of your files.

Another way to tackle your issue is: review the changes in each file, and decide what changes you want to keep and what changes are not relevant.

answered 2 days ago

LeGEC

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1 Comment

user2871239 2 days ago

I think this might've been it. Thank you.

mariya cherian · Accepted Answer · 2025-11-20 07:53:10Z

0

git reflog will helps you to understand what triggered.This will produce like this

e507167f (HEAD -> beta, origin/beta) HEAD@{0}: checkout: moving from trunk to beta
8ad36515 (origin/trunk, origin/HEAD, trunk) HEAD@{1}: checkout: moving from beta to trunk
e507167f (HEAD -> beta, origin/beta) HEAD@{2}: commit: sync file removed
e84ed164 HEAD@{3}: pull: Fast-forward
53d627ed HEAD@{4}: checkout: moving from trunk to beta

both modified: file_3
This file may contains conflict markers.This is because of the merge operation.When a conflict happens,it will pause the merging and insert conflict markers into the conflicted file to highlight the areas where issue exists.To fix it,
1. Manually edit the file to keep the desired changes, remove the conflict markers (<<<<<<<, =======, >>>>>>>), and then commit the changes to finalize the merge
2.Run the following to return your branch to the state it was in before you started the merge attempt
git merge --abort

if this diaplays "mo merge" then need to hard reset
git reset --hard

NOTE: This will completely discard changes in the working directory and staging area

edited 2 days ago

answered 2 days ago

mariya cherian

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2 Comments

j6t 2 days ago

Please never suggest git reset --hard to a newcomer, at least not in a simple copy-and-paste-able manner. It erases all uncommitted work. Neither git merge --abort, which is just a synonym for the former.

user2871239 2 days ago

I added my reflog output. It's not obvious to me from that, I'm afraid.

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