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?

Answer 1

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 your 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 no 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 > git-dif-file.diff

Answer 2

The main idea is:

Stash the changes in a dirty working directory away

So basically, the Stash command keeps the changes that you don't need or want (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.

Answer 3

Maybe you can look at stash as a temporary "private" commit. When you stash, you are not adding to the commit history that others will see. It's for situations where you quickly need to tuck something away.

Just as one simple example: you need to go back to the master branch quickly (for whatever reason) and don't have time to add to staging area or make a proper commit (maybe you don't have time to review the work you did and cannot quickly come up with a clear commit message and description?).

A terrible commit will be there for all to see. Stash is similar to a commit, you get to add a message for yourself, reset the working directory, and then you can come back later, and you'll be the only person that can see it. At least, I don't believe pushing stashes is a defult behavior.

There are many other uses mentioned here.

One way to think of stash that might be helpful is as a storage area outside of the git repository "machinery", separate from all branches, and therefore you can access it from anywhere.

Answer 4

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@{1}: 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 realization of your code and save in stashes without branches and commit your custom case!
And later you can use some of stashes and check which is better.

Part 3:
Stash command for local hide your changes.
If you want work remotely you must commit and push.

Answer 5

You can use both ways either to stash and start or create a new branch from upstream. Stash is more convenient way to save undo redo your changes.

Answer 6

Main use cases are already provided in above answers.

One of the use case of stash is that If the changes on your branch diverge from the changes in your stash, you may run into conflicts when popping or applying your stash.

You can use git stash branch to create a new branch to apply your stashed changes to. For example,

git stash branch master_stash_newBranch stash@{1}

This checks out a new branch based on the commit that you created your stash from, and then pops your stashed changes onto it.

Answer 7

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

Answer 8

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}

Answer 9

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.

Answer 10

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.