Aborting a stash pop in Git

Question

I popped a stash and there was a merge conflict  Unlike the question that is listed as a duplicate  I already had some uncommitted changes in the directory which I wanted to keep  I don t just want to make the merge conflict disappear  but also to get my directory back to the state it was before the pop   I tried git merge --abort  but git claimed no merge was in progress  Is there an easy way to abort a pop without destroying the changes I originally had in the directory

User · Answer

Some ideas    Use git mergetool to split the merge files into original and new parts  Hopefully one of those is the file with your non-stash changes in it   Apply the diff of the stash in reverse  to undo just those changes  You ll probably have to manually split out the files with the merge conflicts  which hopefully the above trick will work for     I didn t test either of these  so I don t know for sure of they will work

User · Answer

If you don t have to worry about any other changes you made and you just want to go back to the last commit  then you can do   git reset   git checkout   git clean -f

User · Answer

My use case  just tried popping onto the wrong branch and got conflicts   All I need is to undo the pop but keep it in the stash list so I can pop it out on the correct branch   I did this   git reset HEAD --hard git checkout my correct branch git stash pop   Easy

User · Answer

Ok  I think I have worked out  git stash unapply    It s more complex than git apply --reverse because you need reverse merging action in case there was any merging done by the git stash apply   The reverse merge requires that all current changes be pushed into the index    git add -u   Then invert the merge-recursive that was done by git stash apply    git merge-recursive stash  0   --   git write-tree  stash  0  1   Now you will be left with just the non-stash changes   They will be in the index   You can use git reset to unstage your changes if you like   Given that your original git stash apply failed I assume the reverse might also fail since some of the things it wants to undo did not get done   Here s an example showing how the working copy  via git status  ends up clean again      git status   On branch trunk nothing to commit  working directory clean     git stash apply Auto-merging foo c   On branch trunk   Changed but not updated       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    foo c   no changes added to commit  use  git add  and or  git commit -a      git add -u    git merge-recursive stash  0   --   git write-tree  stash  0  1 Auto-merging foo c    git status   On branch trunk nothing to commit  working directory clean

User · Answer

Try using if tracked file  git rm  lt path to file gt  git reset   lt path to file gt  git checkout  lt path to file gt

User · Answer

I solved this in a somewhat different way  Here s what happened   First  I popped on the wrong branch and got conflicts  The stash remained intact but the index was in conflict resolution  blocking many commands   A simple git reset HEAD aborted the conflict resolution and left the uncommitted  and UNWANTED  changes   Several git co  lt filename gt  reverted the index to the initial state  Finally  I switched branch with git co  lt branch-name gt  and run a new git stash pop  which resolved without conflicts

User · Answer

If there were no staged changes before the git stash pop  as in the question  then the following two commands should work   git diff --name-only --cached   xargs git checkout --ours HEAD git ls-tree stash  0  3 --name-only   xargs rm   The first reverses any merges from the stash  successful or not   The second deletes any untracked files introduced by the stash   From man git stash   The working directory must match the index   Which  DavidG points out  the stash pop will fail if any currently unstaged modified files conflict   As such  we shouldn t need to worry about unwinding merge conflicts beyond getting back to HEAD   Any remaining modified files are then unrelated to the stash  and were modified before the stash pop  If there were staged changes  I m unclear on whether we can rely on the same commands and you may want to try  Ben Jackson s technique   Suggestions appreciated    Here is a testing setup for all of the various cases https   gist github com here 4f3af6dafdb4ca15e804    Result    Merge succeeded in m  theirs    Conflict in b   Unstaged in a   Untracked in c and d    Goal    Reverse changes to successful merge m   Keep our version in merge conflict b   Keep our unstaged a   Keep our untracked d   Delete stashed untracked c

User · Answer

OK  I think I have managed to find a work-flow that will get you back to where you need to be  as if you had not done the pop    TAKE A BACKUP BEFOREHAND   I don t know whether this will work for you  so copy your whole repo just in case it doesn t work   1  Fix the merge problems and fix all the conflict by selecting all the changes that come from the patch  in tortoisemerge  this shows up as one REMOETE  theirs     git mergetool   2  Commit these changes  they will already be added via the mergetool command   Give it a commit message of  merge  or something you remember    git commit -m  merge    3  Now you will still have your local unstaged changes that you started originally  with a new commit from the patch  we can get rid of this later   Now commit your unstaged changes  git add   git add -u   git commit -m  local changes    4  Reverse the patch  This can be done with the following command   git stash show -p   git apply -R   5  Commit these changes   git commit -a -m  reversed patch    6  Get rid of the patch unpatch commits  git rebase -i HEAD      from this  remove the two lines with  merge  and  reversed patch  in it    7  Get your unstanged changes back and undo the  local changes  commit  git reset HEAD    I ve run through it with a simple example and it gets you back to where you want to be - directly before the stash was popped  with your local changes and with the stash still being available to pop

User · Answer

I m posting here hoping that others my find my answer helpful  I had a similar problem when I tried to do a stash pop on a different branch than the one I had stashed from  On my case I had no files that were uncommitted or in the index but still got into the merge conflicts case  same case as  pid   As others pointed out previously  the failed git stash pop did indeed retain my stash  then A quick git reset HEAD plus going back to my original branch and doing the stash from there did resolve my problem

User · Answer

Edit  From the git help stash documentation in the pop section   Applying the state can fail with conflicts  in this case  it is not removed from the stash list  You need to resolve the conflicts by hand and call git stash drop manually afterwards   If the --index option is used  then tries to reinstate not only the working tree s changes  but also the index s ones  However  this can fail  when you have conflicts  which are stored in the index  where you therefore can no longer apply the changes as they were originally    Try hardcopying all your repo into a new dir  so you have a copy of it  and run   git stash show and save that output somewhere if you care about it   then  git stash drop to drop the conflicting stash then  git reset HEAD  That should leave your repo in the state it was before  hopefully  I still haven t been able to repro your problem        I am trying to repro your problem but all I get when usin git stash pop is    error  Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge      Please  commit your changes or stash them before you can merge  Aborting   In a clean dir   git init echo hello world  gt  a git add a  amp  git commit -m  a  echo hallo welt  gt  gt  a echo hello world  gt  b git add b  amp  git commit -m  b  echo hallo welt  gt  gt  b git stash echo hola mundo  gt  gt  a git stash pop   I don t see git trying to merge my changes  it just fails  Do you have any repro steps we can follow to help you out

User · Answer

I could reproduce clean git stash pop on  dirty  directory  with uncommitted changes  but not yet pop that generates a merge conflict   If on merge conflict the stash you tried to apply didn t disappear  you can try to examine git show stash  0   optionally with --ours or --theirs  and compare with git statis and git diff HEAD   You should be able to see which changes came from applying a stash

User · Answer

Simple one-liner I have always used git reset --merge I can t remember it ever failing

User · Answer

Use git reflog to list all changes made in your git history  Copy an action id and type git reset ACTION ID

User · Answer

If DavidG is correct that it didn t pop the stash because of the merge conflict  then you merely need to clean up your working directory   Quickly git commit everything you care about    You can reset or squash the commit later if you re not done    Then with everything you care about safe  git reset everything else that git stash pop dumped into your working directory

[git] Aborting a stash pop in Git

Examples related to git

Examples related to git-stash