[git] Undo git stash pop that results in merge conflict

I began making changes to my codebase, not realizing I was on an old topic branch. To transfer them, I wanted to stash them and then apply them to a new branch off of master. I used git stash pop to transfer work-in-progress changes to this new branch, forgetting that I hadn't pulled new changes into master before creating the new branch. This resulted in a bunch of merge conflicts and loss of a clean stash of my changes (since I used pop).

Once I recreate the new branch correctly, how I can I recover my stashed changes to apply them properly?

This question is related to git

The answer is


Luckily git stash pop does not change the stash in the case of a conflict!

So nothing, to worry about, just clean up your code and try it again.

Say your codebase was clean before, you could go back to that state with: git checkout -f
Then do the stuff you forgot, e.g. git merge missing-branch
After that just fire git stash pop again and you get the same stash, that conflicted before.

Keep in mind: The stash is safe, however, uncommitted changes in the working directory are of course not. They can get messed up.


git checkout -f

must work, if your previous state is clean.


Instructions here are a little complicated so I'm going to offer something more straightforward:

  1. git reset HEAD --hard Abandon all changes to the current branch

  2. ... Perform intermediary work as necessary

  3. git stash pop Re-pop the stash again at a later date when you're ready