When juggling a number of branches in Git, it’s simple to unintentionally begin engaged on the improper department, earlier than realising you could swap to a different. Or generally you may 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 could bounce 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 kind, the git stash command creates a stash entry. To reapply our stashed adjustments at a later level, we are able to use git stash apply.
Create a stash:
git stash
Apply a stash entry to your present working department:
git stash apply
We are able to apply the stash entry to a unique department – it doesn’t need to be the department that we created the stash from.
Stashing untracked recordsdata
By default, git stash will solely stash the tracked recordsdata. If we need to create or apply a stash entry together with untracked recordsdata (e.g. recordsdata that haven’t beforehand been staged, or recordsdata which can be in our .gitignore), we are able to add the -u (or --include-untracked) flag to our command:
Create a stash entry together with untracked recordsdata:
git stash -u
To use a stash entry together with untracked recordsdata:
git apply -u
A number of stash entries
git stash apply will apply the final stash entry you created to your present working department. Nevertheless it’s potential to retailer a number of stashes on the similar time, and to use them individually. To listing all of the stash entries, use git stash listing. This may deliver up an inventory that appears one thing like this:
git stash listing
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 may not be very helpful if we’ve a number of stash entries – it’s not very simple to see what adjustments we’ll be making use of! As a substitute, we might 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 listing our stash entries, we’ll see our customized message as an alternative of the generic one:
git stash listing
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 listing, we are able to reference it with the apply command:
git stash apply stash@{2}
(Exchange the final half with whichever stash reference we want to use.)
Subsequent stash entries are added to the start of the stash listing. The newest stash could have the reference stash@{0}.
The stash listing can include stash entries from completely different branches, which might every be utilized to different branches in your venture.
Making use of vs. popping
Making use of a stash entry will make a copy within the stash listing – so we might apply the identical stash entry to a number of branches. If we run git stash listing after making use of the stash, we’ll see the stash we utilized remains to be there.
Record all our present stashes:
git stash listing
If we need to take away a stash entry from the listing after we apply it, we might use pop as an alternative of `apply:
git stash pop
This works equally to apply, the place it should pop the final stash entry by default Or we might 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 another branches, and also you need to preserve your stash listing good and clear.
Creating a brand new department with a stash utilized
We are able to use department to a brand new department and apply the latest stash entry:
git stash department
That is mainly a shortcut for the next:
git checkout -b my-new-branch
git stash apply
Once more, it will possibly take a reference to a selected stash entry for those who want to apply a unique 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 might be a lot less complicated if we solely have a handful of stashes to select from, relatively than a whole lot! Plus as soon as our adjustments are commited, we don’t really want these stashes anyway.
We are able to take away particular person stashes from the stash listing by utilizing the drop command. As with pop and apply, this can have an effect on the newest stash entry by default. If you wish to goal a selected stash then we are able to go it the stash reference:
git stash drop stash@{2}
Alternatively we are able to clear all our stash entries without delay:
git stash clear
