git switch branch without discarding local changes

Question

Alright  lets say one day we make happen to make a bunch of modifications and when we go to commit them we notice we were working on the wrong branch   How can we force git to switch branches without discarding local changes   I m probably going to go about this in a naive way while I wait a reply  but I would like to know if theres a correct procedure as I d be lying if I said this hasn t happened to me before      Backup changed repo git reset --hard git checkout right-branch Restore changes git commit -m  changes

User · Answer

You can either     Use git stash to shelve your changes or  Create another branch and commit your changes there  and then merge that branch into your working directory

User · Answer

There are a bunch of different ways depending on how far along you are and which branch es  you want them on   Let s take a classic mistake     git checkout master     pause for coffee  etc         return  edit a bunch of stuff  then  oops  wanted to be on develop   So now you want these changes  which you have not yet committed to master  to be on develop    If you don t have a develop yet  the method is trivial     git checkout -b develop   This creates a new develop branch starting from wherever you are now   Now you can commit and the new stuff is all on develop  You do have a develop   See if Git will let you switch without doing anything     git checkout develop   This will either succeed  or complain   If it succeeds  great   Just commit   If not  error  Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten       you still have lots of options   The easiest is probably git stash  as all the other answer-ers that beat me to clicking post said    Run git stash save or git stash push 1 or just plain git stash which is short for save   push     git stash   This commits your code  yes  it really does make some commits  using a weird non-branch-y method   The commits it makes are not  on  any branch but are now safely stored in the repository  so you can now switch branches  then  apply  the stash     git checkout develop Switched to branch  develop    git stash apply   If all goes well  and you like the results  you should then git stash drop the stash   This deletes the reference to the weird non-branch-y commits    They re still in the repository  and can sometimes be retrieved in an emergency  but for most purposes  you should consider them gone at that point     The apply step does a merge of the stashed changes  using Git s powerful underlying merge machinery  the same kind of thing it uses when you do branch merges   This means you can get  merge conflicts  if the branch you were working on by mistake  is sufficiently different from the branch you meant to be working on   So it s a good idea to inspect the results carefully before you assume that the stash applied cleanly  even if Git itself did not detect any merge conflicts   Many people use git stash pop  which is short-hand for git stash apply  amp  amp  git stash drop   That s fine as far as it goes  but it means that if the application results in a mess  and you decide you don t want to proceed down this path  you can t get the stash back easily   That s why I recommend separate apply  inspect results  drop only if when satisfied    This does of course introduce another point where you can take another coffee break and forget what you were doing  come back  and do the wrong thing  so it s not a perfect cure      1The save in git stash save is the old verb for creating a new stash   Git version 2 13 introduced the new verb to make things more consistent with pop and to add more options to the creation command   Git version 2 16 formally deprecated the old verb  though it still works in Git 2 23  which is the latest release at the time I am editing this

User · Answer

You could use --merge -m git checkout option  git checkout -m  lt another-branch gt   -m --merge When switching branches  if you have local modifications to one or more files that are different between the current branch and the branch to which you are switching  the command refuses to switch branches in order to preserve your modifications in context  However  with this option  a three-way merge between the current branch  your working tree contents  and the new branch is done  and you will be on the new branch   Source  https   git-scm com docs git-checkout

User · Answer

You can use    git stash to save your work git checkout  lt your-branch gt  git stash apply or git stash pop to load your last work   Git stash extremely useful when you want temporarily save undone or messy work  while you want to doing something on another branch  git -stash documentation

User · Answer

Use git stash git stash  It pushes changes to a stack  When you want to pull them back use git stash apply  You can even pull individual items out   To completely blow away the stash  git stash clear

User · Answer

git  stash to save your uncommited changes git stash list to list your saved uncommited stashes git stash apply stash  x  where x can be 0 1 2  no of stashes that you have made

[git] git switch branch without discarding local changes

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