How to name and retrieve a stash by name in git

Question

I was always under the impression that you could give a stash a name by doing git stash save stashname  which you could later on apply by doing git stash apply stashname  But it seems that in this case all that happens is that stashname will be used as the stash description   Is there no way to actually name a stash  If not  what would you recommend to achieve equivalent functionality  Essentially I have a small stash which I would periodically like to apply  but don t want to always have to hunt in git stash list what its actual stash number is

User · Answer

You can turn a stash into a branch if you feel it's important enough:

git stash branch <branchname> [<stash>]

from the man page:

This creates and checks out a new branch named <branchname> starting from the commit at which the <stash> was originally created, applies the changes recorded in <stash> to the new working tree and index, then drops the <stash> if that completes successfully. When no <stash> is given, applies the latest one.

This is useful if the branch on which you ran git stash save has changed enough that git stash apply fails due to conflicts. Since the stash is applied on top of the commit that was HEAD at the time git stash was run, it restores the originally stashed state with no conflicts.

You can later rebase this new branch to some other place that's a descendent of where you were when you stashed.

User · Answer

For everything besides the stash creation  I d propose another solution by introducing fzf as a dependency  I recommend taking 5 minutes of your time and get introduced to it  as it is over-all great productivity booster   Anyway  a related excerpt from their examples page offering stash searching  It s very easy to change the scriptlet to add additional functionality  like stash application or dropping    fstash         local out q k sha     while out                git stash list --pretty   C yellow  h   gt  14  Cgreen cr  C blue  gs                fzf --ansi --no-sort --query   q  --print-query                   --expect ctrl-d ctrl-b   do         mapfile -t out  lt  lt  lt    out          q    out 0            k    out 1            sha    out -1            sha    sha                  -z   sha      amp  amp  continue         if      k      ctrl-d      then             git diff  sha         elif      k      ctrl-b      then             git stash branch  stash- sha   sha             break          else             git stash show -p  sha         fi     done

User · Answer

Alias This might be a more direct syntax for Unix-like systems without needing to encapsulate in a function  Add the following to    gitconfig under  alias   sshow    sh -c  git stash show stash       -p  - sapply    sh -c  git stash apply stash        - ssave    sh -c  git stash save    1    -   Usage      sapply regex  Example      git sshow MySecretStash  The hyphen at the end says take input from standard input

User · Answer

use git stash push -m aNameForYourStash to save it  Then use git stash list to learn the index of the stash that you want to apply  Then use git stash pop --index 0 to pop the stash and apply it   note  I m using git version 2 21 0 windows 1

User · Answer

What about this   git stash save stashname git stash apply stash   stashname

User · Answer

Use a small bash script to look up the number of the stash  Call it  gitapply    NAME   1  if    -z   NAME      then echo  usage  gitapply  name    exit  fi git stash apply   git stash list   grep   NAME    cut -d  -f1    Usage   gitapply foo      where foo is a substring of the name of the stash you want

User · Answer

Use git stash save NAME to save   Then    you can use this script to choose which to apply  or pop       usr bin env ruby  git-stash-pick by Dan Rosenstark    can take a command  default is apply command   ARGV 0  command    apply  if  command ARGV clear  stashes      stashNames       git stash list  split   n   each with index    line  index      lineSplit   line split            puts    index 1     lineSplit 2        stashes index    lineSplit 0      stashNames index    lineSplit 2    print  Choose Stash or ENTER to exit    input   gets chomp if input to i to s    input     realIndex   input to i - 1     puts   n nDoing   command  to   stashNames realIndex   n n      puts  git stash   command    stashes realIndex    end   I like being able to see the names of the stashes and choose  Also I use Zshell and frankly didn t know how to use some of the Bash aliases above     Note  As Kevin says  you should use tags and cherry-picks instead

User · Answer

git stash save is deprecated as of 2 15 x 2 16  instead you can use git stash push -m  message    You can use it like this   git stash push -m  message    where  message  is your note for that stash   In order to retrieve the stash you can use  git stash list  This will output a list like this  for example    stash  0   On develop  perf-spike stash  1   On develop  node v10   Then you simply use apply giving it the stash  index    git stash apply stash  1    References git stash man page

User · Answer

Late to the party here  but if using VSCode  a quick way to do so is to open the command palette  CTRL   CMD   SHIFT   P  and type  Pop Stash   you ll be able to retrieve your stash by name without the need to use git CLI

User · Answer

So  I m not sure why there s so much consternation on this topic  I can name a git stash with both a push and the deprecated save  and I can use a regex to pull it back with an apply   Git stash method to use a name to apply    git stash push -m  john-hancock     git stash apply stash   john-hancock    As it has been mentioned before  the save command is deprecated  but it still works  so you can used this on older systems where you can t update them with a push call  Unlike the push command  the -m switch isn t required with save      save is deprecated but still functional     git stash save john-hancock   This is Git 2 2 and Windows 10   Visual Proof  Here s a beautiful animated GIF demonstrating the process     Sequence of events  The GIF runs quickly  but if you look  the process is this    The ls command shows 4 files in the directory touch example html adds a 5th file git stash push -m  john-hancock  -a  The -a includes untracked files  The ls command shows 4 files after the stash  meaning the stash and the implicit hard reset worked git stash apply stash   john-hancock  runs The ls command lists 5 files  showing the example html file was brought back  meaning the git stash apply command worked    Does this even make sense   To be frank  I m not sure what the benefit of this approach is though  There s value in giving the stash a name  but not the retrieval  Maybe to script the shelve and unshelve process it d be helpful  but it s still way easier to just pop a stash by name     git stash pop 3   git stash apply 3   That looks way easier to me than the regex

User · Answer

It s unfortunate that git stash apply stash    lt regex gt   doesn t work  it doesn t actually search the stash list  see the comments under the accepted answer    Here are drop-in replacements that search git stash list by regex to find the first  most recent  stash   lt n gt   and then pass that to git stash  lt command gt        standalone  replace  lt stash name gt  with your regex   n   git stash list --max-count 1 --grep  lt stash name gt    cut -f1 -d       if    -n   n       then git stash show   n    else echo  Error  No stash matches    return 1   fi   n   git stash list --max-count 1 --grep  lt stash name gt    cut -f1 -d       if    -n   n       then git stash apply   n    else echo  Error  No stash matches    return 1   fi         gitconfig  alias    sshow     f     n   git stash list --max-count 1 --grep  1   cut -f1 -d       if    -n   n       then git stash show   n    else echo  Error  No stash matches  1    return 1   fi    f    sapply     f     n   git stash list --max-count 1 --grep  1   cut -f1 -d       if    -n   n       then git stash apply   n    else echo  Error  No stash matches  1    return 1   fi    f     usage     git sshow my stash  myfile txt   1    1 file changed  1 insertion       git sapply my stash On branch master Your branch is up to date with  origin master    Changes not staged for commit     use  git add  lt file gt      to update what will be committed     use  git checkout --  lt file gt      to discard changes in working directory       modified    myfile txt  no changes added to commit  use  git add  and or  git commit -a     Note that proper result codes are returned so you can use these commands within other scripts   This can be verified after running commands with   echo      Just be careful about variable expansion exploits because I wasn t sure about the --grep  1 portion   It should maybe be --grep   1  but I m not sure if that would interfere with regex delimiters  I m open to suggestions

User · Answer

This answer owes much to Klemen Slavic  I would have just commented on the accepted answer but I don t have enough rep yet     You could also add a git alias to find the stash ref and use it in other aliases for show  apply  drop  etc    alias      sgrep     f     ref   git --no-pager stash list   grep   1    cut -d  -f1   head -n1   echo   ref - lt no match gt       f      sshow     f     git stash show   git sgrep   1   -p     f      sapply     f     git stash apply   git sgrep   1       f      sdrop     f     git stash drop   git sgrep   1       f    Note that the reason for the ref           echo   ref - lt no match gt    pattern is so a blank string is not returned which would cause sshow  sapply and sdrop to target the latest stash instead of fail as one would expect

User · Answer

Stashes are not meant to be permanent things like you want  You d probably be better served using tags on commits  Construct the thing you want to stash  Make a commit out of it  Create a tag for that commit  Then roll back your branch to HEAD   Now when you want to reapply that stash you can use git cherry-pick -n tagname  -n is --no-commit

User · Answer

This is one way to accomplish this using PowerShell    lt    SYNOPSIS Restores  applies  a previously saved stash based on full or partial stash name    DESCRIPTION Restores  applies  a previously saved stash based on full or partial stash name and then optionally drops the stash  Can be used regardless of whether  git stash save  was done or just  git stash   If no stash matches a message is given  If multiple stashes match a message is given along with matching stash info    PARAMETER message A full or partial stash message name  see right side output of  git stash list    Can also be   stash N   where N is 0 based stash index    PARAMETER drop If -drop is specified  the matching stash is dropped after being applied    EXAMPLE Restore-Stash  Readme change  Apply-Stash MyStashName Apply-Stash MyStashName -drop Apply-Stash  stash  0     gt  function Restore-Stash         CmdletBinding         Alias  Apply-Stash        PARAM            Parameter Mandatory  true    message                    switch  drop             stashId    null      if   message -match  stash                stashId    message            if    stashId             matches   git stash list   Where-Object      -match  message            if    matches                Write-Warning  No stashes found with message matching   message  - check git stash list              return                    if   matches Count -gt 1                Write-Warning  Found    matches Count  matches for   message   Refine message or pass  stash  N   to this function or git stash apply              return  matches                     parts    matches -split              stashId    parts 0             git stash apply    stashId        if   drop            git stash drop    stashId             More details here

User · Answer

in my fish shell  function gsap   git stash list   grep     argv    tr -dc  0-9    xargs git stash apply end   use  gsap name of stash

User · Answer

git stash apply also works with other refs than stash  0   So you can use ordinary tags to get a persistent name  This also has the advantage that you cannot accidentaly git stash drop or git stash pop it    So you can define an alias pstash  aka  persistent stash   like this   git config --global alias pstash   f    git stash  amp  amp  git tag   1  stash  amp  amp  git stash drop     f    Now you can create a tagged stash   git pstash x-important-stuff   and show and apply it again as usual   git stash show x-important-stuff git stash apply x-important-stuff

User · Answer

If you are just looking for a lightweight way to save some or all of your current working copy changes and then reapply them later at will  consider a patch file     save your working copy changes git diff  gt  some patch    re-apply it later git apply some patch   Every now and then I wonder if I should be using stashes for this and then I see things like the insanity above and I m content with what I m doing

User · Answer

This is how you do it  git stash push -m  quot my stash quot   Where  quot my stash quot  is the stash name  Some more useful things to know  All the stashes are stored in a stack  Type  git stash list  This will list down all your stashes  To apply a stash and remove it from the stash stack  type  git stash pop stash  n   To apply a stash and keep it in the stash stack  type  git stash apply stash  n   Where n is the index of the stashed change

User · Answer

Alias  sapply     f     git stash apply     git stash list   awk -F  --posix -vpat            0   pat  print   1  exit           f   Usage  git sapply   lt regex gt     compatible with Git for Windows   Edit  I sticked to my original solution  but I see why majority would prefer Etan Reisner s version  above   So just for the record   sapply     f     git stash apply     git stash list   grep -E          awk     print   1        sed -n   s     1p          f

User · Answer

I don t think there is a way to git pop a stash by its name   I have created a bash function that does it      bin bash  function gstashpop     IFS         -z   1     amp  amp    echo  provide a stash name   return      index   git stash list   grep -e       1       cut -f1 -d               index     amp  amp    echo  stash name  1 not found   return      git stash apply   index      Example of usage      code site  on master    git stash push -m here the stash name  Saved working directory and index state On master  here the stash name     code site  on master   git stash list stash  0   On master  here the stash name     code site  on master   gstashpop  here the stash name    I hope it helps

User · Answer

I have these two functions in my  zshrc file   function gitstash         git stash push -m  zsh stash name  1     function gitstashapply         git stash apply   git stash list   grep  zsh stash name  1    cut -d  -f1      Using them this way   gitstash nice  gitstashapply nice

[git] How to name and retrieve a stash by name in git?

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