What is the intended use-case for git stash

Question

If I work on branch A and suddenly need to work on branch B before being ready with a commit on branch A  I stash my changes on A  checkout B  do my work there  then checkout A and apply the stash  If I work on A and I want to stop working for the day  should I stash my work and then apply it the next day  when I resume my work   or should I just leave things as they are   uncommitted modified files in the working directory  I don t see why I would need to use stash in this case  except if there is some security benefit  Also  another scenario  I work both at work and at home  If I am not ready with a commit when I want to go home  can I stash my work  push it to GitHub and then pull that stash at home

User · Answer

You can use the following commands    To save your uncommitted changes  git stash  To list your saved stashes  git stash list To apply get back the uncommited changes where x is 0 1 2     git stash apply stash  x        Note     To apply a stash and remove it from the stash list  git stash pop stash  x   To apply a stash and keep it in the stash list  git stash apply stash  x

User · Answer

I know StackOverflow is not the place for opinion based answers  but I actually have a good opinion on when to shelve changes with a stash   You don t want to commit you experimental changes  When you make changes in your workspace working tree  if you need to perform any branch based operations like a merge  push  fetch or pull  you must be at a clean commit point  So if you have workspace changes you need to commit them  But what if you don t want to commit them  What if they are experimental  Something you don t want part of your commit history  Something you don t want others to see when you push to GitHub   You don t want to lose local changes with a hard reset  In that case  you can do a hard reset  But if you do a hard reset you will lose all of your local working tree changes because everything gets overwritten to where it was at the time of the last commit and you ll lose all of your changes   So  as for the answer of  when should you stash   the answer is when you need to get back to a clean commit point with a synchronized working tree index commit  but you don t want to lose your local changes in the process  Just shelve your changes in a stash and you re good   And once you ve done your stash and then merged or pulled or pushed  you can just stash pop or apply and you re back to where you started from   Git stash and GitHub  GitHub is constantly adding new features  but as of right now  there is now way to save a stash there  Again  the idea of a stash is that it s local and private  Nobody else can peek into your stash without physical access to your workstation  Kinda the same way git reflog is private with the git log is public  It probably wouldn t be private if it was pushed up to GitHub    One trick might be to do a diff of your workspace  check the diff into your git repository  commit and then push  Then you can do a pull from home  get the diff and then unwind it  But that s a pretty messy way to achieve those results   git diff  gt  git-dif-file diff

User · Answer

I will break answer on three paragraphs   Part 1   git stash  To save your un-committed changes in a  stash   Note  this removes changes from working tree    git checkout some branch  change to intended branch -- in this case some branch   git stash list  list stashes      You can see  stash  0   WIP on  branch name    SHA-1 of last commit   last commit of you branch  stash  0   WIP on master  085b095c6   modification for test   git stash apply  to apply stash to working tree in current branch   git stash apply stash  12   if you will have many stashes you can choose what stash will apply -- in this case we apply stash 12   git stash drop stash  0   to remove from stash list -- in this case stash 0   git stash pop stash  1   to apply selected stash and drop it from stash list   Part 2  You can hide your changes with this command but it is not necessary  You can continue on the next day without stash  This commands for hide your changes and work on different branches or for implementation some realisation of your code and save in stashes without branches and commitsor your custom case  And later you can use some of stashes and check wich is better   Part 3  Stash command for local hide your changes  If you want work remotely you must commit and push

User · Answer

Stash is just a convenience method  Since branches are so cheap and easy to manage in git  I personally almost always prefer creating a new temporary branch than stashing  but it s a matter of taste mostly   The one place I do like stashing is if I discover I forgot something in my last commit and have already started working on the next one in the same branch     Assume the latest commit was already done   start working on the next patch  and discovered I was missing something    stash away the current mess I made git stash save    some changes in the working dir    and now add them to the last commit  git add -u git commit --amend    back to work  git stash pop

User · Answer

The main idea is      Stash the changes in a dirty working directory away   So Basicallly Stash command keep your some changes that you don t need them or want them at the moment  but you may need them      Use git stash when you want to record the current state of the   working directory   and the index  but want to go back to a clean   working directory  The command saves   your local modifications away   and reverts the working directory to match the HEAD  commit

User · Answer

If you hit git stash when you have changes in the working copy  not in the staging area   git will create a stashed object and pushes onto the stack of stashes  just like you did git checkout --   but you won t lose changes   Later  you can pop from the top of the stack

User · Answer

The stash command will stash any changes you have made since your last commit  In your case there is no reason to stash if you are gonna continue working on it the next day  I would only use stash to undo changes that you don t want to commit

[git] What is the intended use-case for git stash?

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