How to `git pull` while ignoring local changes?

Is there a way to do a git pull that ignores any local file changes without blowing the directory away and having to perform a git clone?

If you mean you want the pull to overwrite local changes, doing the merge as if the working tree were clean, well, clean the working tree:

git reset --hard
git pull

If there are untracked local files you could use git clean to remove them.

• git clean -f to remove untracked files
• -df to remove untracked files and directories
• -xdf to remove untracked or ignored files or directories

If on the other hand you want to keep the local modifications somehow, you'd use stash to hide them away before pulling, then reapply them afterwards:

git stash
git pull
git stash pop

I don't think it makes any sense to literally ignore the changes, though - half of pull is merge, and it needs to merge the committed versions of content with the versions it fetched.