When juggling a number of branches in Git, it’s straightforward to by accident begin engaged on the unsuitable department, earlier than realising you should swap to a different. Or generally you could be engaged on a characteristic and also you’re not able to commit your adjustments but, when somebody asks you to repair an pressing bug and you should leap onto one other department. That is the place Git’s stash command is available in helpful.
Creating and making use of a stash entry
Stashing permits us to save lots of a duplicate of our uncommitted adjustments on the present working department.
In its easiest type, the git stash command creates a stash entry. To reapply our stashed adjustments at a later level, we will use git stash apply.
Create a stash:
git stash
Apply a stash entry to your present working department:
git stash apply
We will apply the stash entry to a special department – it doesn’t must be the department that we created the stash from.
Stashing untracked information
By default, git stash will solely stash the tracked information. If we wish to create or apply a stash entry together with untracked information (e.g. information that haven’t beforehand been staged, or information which are in our .gitignore), we will add the -u (or --include-untracked) flag to our command:
Create a stash entry together with untracked information:
git stash -u
To use a stash entry together with untracked information:
git apply -u
A number of stash entries
git stash apply will apply the final stash entry you created to your present working department. But it surely’s potential to retailer a number of stashes on the similar time, and to use them individually. To checklist all of the stash entries, use git stash checklist. This can carry up a listing that appears one thing like this:
git stash checklist
stash@{0}: WIP on my-branch: ca96af0 Commit message 3
stash@{1}: WIP on my-branch: 03af20c Commit message 2
stash@{2}: WIP on my-branch: 216b662 Commit message 1
By default, stash entries are named WIP (Work in Progress), adopted by the department and commit the stash entry was created from. This won’t be very helpful if we’ve a number of stash entries – it’s not very straightforward to see what adjustments we’ll be making use of! As an alternative, we may save our stash with a customized message, so it’s simpler to see what it pertains to:
git stash save 'my model new stash'
Now, after we checklist our stash entries, we’ll see our customized message as an alternative of the generic one:
git stash checklist
stash@{0}: On my-branch: my model new stash
stash@{1}: WIP on my-branch: ca96af0 Commit message 3
stash@{2}: WIP on my-branch: 03af20c Commit message 2
stash@{3}: WIP on my-branch: 216b662 Commit message 1
To use a specific stash entry from our checklist, we will reference it with the apply command:
git stash apply stash@{2}
(Change the final half with whichever stash reference we want to use.)
Subsequent stash entries are added to the start of the stash checklist. The latest stash can have the reference stash@{0}.
The stash checklist can include stash entries from completely different branches, which may every be utilized to different branches in your undertaking.
Making use of vs. popping
Making use of a stash entry will make a copy within the stash checklist – so we may apply the identical stash entry to a number of branches. If we run git stash checklist after making use of the stash, we’ll see the stash we utilized continues to be there.
Listing all our present stashes:
git stash checklist
If we wish to take away a stash entry from the checklist after we apply it, we may use pop as an alternative of `apply:
git stash pop
This works equally to apply, the place it’s going to pop the final stash entry by default Or we may as an alternative pop a person stash:
git pop stash@{2}
Popping might be a good suggestion if you don’t want to use your stash entry on some other branches, and also you wish to preserve your stash checklist good and clear.
Creating a brand new department with a stash utilized
We will use department to a brand new department and apply the newest stash entry:
git stash department
That is principally a shortcut for the next:
git checkout -b my-new-branch
git stash apply
Once more, it might take a reference to a particular stash entry for those who want to apply a special entry:
git stash department stash@{2}
Eradicating and clearing stashes
It’s a good suggestion to maintain a clear retailer and take away the stash entries we don’t want anymore, particularly when transferring between branches. Life will likely be a lot less complicated if we solely have a handful of stashes to choose from, slightly than a whole bunch! Plus as soon as our adjustments are commited, we don’t actually need these stashes anyway.
We will take away particular person stashes from the stash checklist through the use of the drop command. As with pop and apply, this may have an effect on the newest stash entry by default. If you wish to goal a particular stash then we will go it the stash reference:
git stash drop stash@{2}
Alternatively we will clear all our stash entries without delay:
git stash clear
