It would be nice if it did the fetch to discover the Current branch master is up to date before failing with You have unstaged changes. If someone does it, send me a bill for a nice dinner - bounty offered. I wish I had more time. $ git pull -r error: cannot pull with rebase: You have unstaged changes. error: please commit or stash them. $ git stash Saved working directory and index state WIP on master: 2134bc6 corrected acronym: ACCIDENT: Assessment, Compliance, Correlation, and Incident response for the DoD ENTerprise $ git pull -r Current branch master is up to date. $ git stash pop On branch master Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 1 commit. (use "git push" to publish your local commits) -- Jason Pyeron | Architect PD Inc | Certified SBA 8(a) 10 w 24th St | Certified SBA HUBZone Baltimore, MD | CAGE Code: 1WVR6 .mil: jason.j.pyeron.ctr@xxxxxxxx .com: jpyeron@xxxxxxxx tel : 202-741-9397