Homebrew errors; update fails

homebrew

Homebrew has been working fine for years…until today. Anyone know what's going on and/or how to fix it?

$ brew --config
HOMEBREW_VERSION: 0.9.4
ORIGIN: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew.git
HEAD: cce7d7a441a7b699d4c1cc6d9726e325d09e0e12
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /usr/local
HOMEBREW_CELLAR: /usr/local/Cellar
CPU: quad-core 64-bit ivybridge
OS X: 10.8.3-x86_64
Xcode: 4.6.2
CLT: 4.6.0.0.1.1365549073
GCC-4.2: build 5666
LLVM-GCC: build 2336
Clang: 4.2 build 425
X11: N/A
System Ruby: 1.8.7-358
Perl: /usr/bin/perl
Python: /usr/bin/python
Ruby: /Users/meltemi/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.0.0-p195/bin/ruby

$ brew update
error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge:
    Library/Aliases/fishfish
    Library/Formula/aamath.rb
    Library/Formula/abcmidi.rb
    Library/Formula/agedu.rb
    ...
    Library/brew.rb
Please, commit your changes or stash them before you can merge.
error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by merge:
    Library/ENV/pkgconfig/10.9
    Library/Formula/cctools-headers.rb
    Library/Formula/dyld-headers.rb
    Library/Formula/ld64.rb
    Library/Formula/libunwind-headers.rb
    Library/Formula/osm2pgsql.rb
    Library/Formula/proxychains-ng.rb
    Library/Formula/rbenv-aliases.rb
Please move or remove them before you can merge.
Aborting
Error: Failure while executing: git pull -q origin refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/origin/master

Best Answer

The brew doctor should be helpful about this, next best thing to try is repairing formulae from taps with brew tap --repair. If that still does not help, try the following steps:

brew untap <X> where is from brew tap.

cd $(brew --prefix)

git clean -fd

git reset origin/master --force

brew update

brew tap <X> to have your taps again.