git-stash(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | COMMANDS | OPTIONS | DISCUSSION | EXAMPLES | CONFIGURATION | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON

GIT-STASH(1)                   Git Manual                   GIT-STASH(1)

NAME         top

       git-stash - Stash the changes in a dirty working directory away

SYNOPSIS         top

       git stash list [<log-options>]
       git stash show [-u | --include-untracked | --only-untracked] [<diff-options>] [<stash>]
       git stash drop [-q | --quiet] [<stash>]
       git stash pop [--index] [-q | --quiet] [<stash>]
       git stash apply [--index] [-q | --quiet] [<stash>]
       git stash branch <branchname> [<stash>]
       git stash [push [-p | --patch] [-S | --staged] [-k | --[no-]keep-index] [-q | --quiet]
                    [-u | --include-untracked] [-a | --all] [(-m | --message) <message>]
                    [--pathspec-from-file=<file> [--pathspec-file-nul]]
                    [--] [<pathspec>...]]
       git stash save [-p | --patch] [-S | --staged] [-k | --[no-]keep-index] [-q | --quiet]
                    [-u | --include-untracked] [-a | --all] [<message>]
       git stash clear
       git stash create [<message>]
       git stash store [(-m | --message) <message>] [-q | --quiet] <commit>

DESCRIPTION         top

       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.

       The modifications stashed away by this command can be listed with
       git stash list, inspected with git stash show, and restored
       (potentially on top of a different commit) with git stash apply.
       Calling git stash without any arguments is equivalent to git
       stash push. A stash is by default listed as "WIP on branchname
       ...", but you can give a more descriptive message on the command
       line when you create one.

       The latest stash you created is stored in refs/stash; older
       stashes are found in the reflog of this reference and can be
       named using the usual reflog syntax (e.g. stash@{0} is the most
       recently created stash, stash@{1} is the one before it,
       stash@{2.hours.ago} is also possible). Stashes may also be
       referenced by specifying just the stash index (e.g. the integer n
       is equivalent to stash@{n}).

COMMANDS         top

       push [-p|--patch] [-S|--staged] [-k|--[no-]keep-index]
       [-u|--include-untracked] [-a|--all] [-q|--quiet] [(-m|--message)
       <message>] [--pathspec-from-file=<file> [--pathspec-file-nul]]
       [--] [<pathspec>...]
           Save your local modifications to a new stash entry and roll
           them back to HEAD (in the working tree and in the index). The
           <message> part is optional and gives the description along
           with the stashed state.

           For quickly making a snapshot, you can omit "push". In this
           mode, non-option arguments are not allowed to prevent a
           misspelled subcommand from making an unwanted stash entry.
           The two exceptions to this are stash -p which acts as alias
           for stash push -p and pathspec elements, which are allowed
           after a double hyphen -- for disambiguation.

       save [-p|--patch] [-S|--staged] [-k|--[no-]keep-index]
       [-u|--include-untracked] [-a|--all] [-q|--quiet] [<message>]
           This option is deprecated in favour of git stash push. It
           differs from "stash push" in that it cannot take pathspec.
           Instead, all non-option arguments are concatenated to form
           the stash message.

       list [<log-options>]
           List the stash entries that you currently have. Each stash
           entry is listed with its name (e.g.  stash@{0} is the latest
           entry, stash@{1} is the one before, etc.), the name of the
           branch that was current when the entry was made, and a short
           description of the commit the entry was based on.

               stash@{0}: WIP on submit: 6ebd0e2... Update git-stash documentation
               stash@{1}: On master: 9cc0589... Add git-stash

           The command takes options applicable to the git log command
           to control what is shown and how. See git-log(1).

       show [-u|--include-untracked|--only-untracked] [<diff-options>]
       [<stash>]
           Show the changes recorded in the stash entry as a diff
           between the stashed contents and the commit back when the
           stash entry was first created. By default, the command shows
           the diffstat, but it will accept any format known to git diff
           (e.g., git stash show -p stash@{1} to view the second most
           recent entry in patch form). If no <diff-option> is provided,
           the default behavior will be given by the stash.showStat, and
           stash.showPatch config variables. You can also use
           stash.showIncludeUntracked to set whether --include-untracked
           is enabled by default.

       pop [--index] [-q|--quiet] [<stash>]
           Remove a single stashed state from the stash list and apply
           it on top of the current working tree state, i.e., do the
           inverse operation of git stash push. The working directory
           must match the index.

           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.

       apply [--index] [-q|--quiet] [<stash>]
           Like pop, but do not remove the state from the stash list.
           Unlike pop, <stash> may be any commit that looks like a
           commit created by stash push or stash create.

       branch <branchname> [<stash>]
           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. If that succeeds, and <stash> is a
           reference of the form stash@{<revision>}, it then drops the
           <stash>.

           This is useful if the branch on which you ran git stash push
           has changed enough that git stash apply fails due to
           conflicts. Since the stash entry 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.

       clear
           Remove all the stash entries. Note that those entries will
           then be subject to pruning, and may be impossible to recover
           (see Examples below for a possible strategy).

       drop [-q|--quiet] [<stash>]
           Remove a single stash entry from the list of stash entries.

       create
           Create a stash entry (which is a regular commit object) and
           return its object name, without storing it anywhere in the
           ref namespace. This is intended to be useful for scripts. It
           is probably not the command you want to use; see "push"
           above.

       store
           Store a given stash created via git stash create (which is a
           dangling merge commit) in the stash ref, updating the stash
           reflog. This is intended to be useful for scripts. It is
           probably not the command you want to use; see "push" above.

OPTIONS         top

       -a, --all
           This option is only valid for push and save commands.

           All ignored and untracked files are also stashed and then
           cleaned up with git clean.

       -u, --include-untracked, --no-include-untracked
           When used with the push and save commands, all untracked
           files are also stashed and then cleaned up with git clean.

           When used with the show command, show the untracked files in
           the stash entry as part of the diff.

       --only-untracked
           This option is only valid for the show command.

           Show only the untracked files in the stash entry as part of
           the diff.

       --index
           This option is only valid for pop and apply commands.

           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).

       -k, --keep-index, --no-keep-index
           This option is only valid for push and save commands.

           All changes already added to the index are left intact.

       -p, --patch
           This option is only valid for push and save commands.

           Interactively select hunks from the diff between HEAD and the
           working tree to be stashed. The stash entry is constructed
           such that its index state is the same as the index state of
           your repository, and its worktree contains only the changes
           you selected interactively. The selected changes are then
           rolled back from your worktree. See the “Interactive Mode”
           section of git-add(1) to learn how to operate the --patch
           mode.

           The --patch option implies --keep-index. You can use
           --no-keep-index to override this.

       -S, --staged
           This option is only valid for push and save commands.

           Stash only the changes that are currently staged. This is
           similar to basic git commit except the state is committed to
           the stash instead of current branch.

           The --patch option has priority over this one.

       --pathspec-from-file=<file>
           This option is only valid for push command.

           Pathspec is passed in <file> instead of commandline args. If
           <file> is exactly - then standard input is used. Pathspec
           elements are separated by LF or CR/LF. Pathspec elements can
           be quoted as explained for the configuration variable
           core.quotePath (see git-config(1)). See also
           --pathspec-file-nul and global --literal-pathspecs.

       --pathspec-file-nul
           This option is only valid for push command.

           Only meaningful with --pathspec-from-file. Pathspec elements
           are separated with NUL character and all other characters are
           taken literally (including newlines and quotes).

       -q, --quiet
           This option is only valid for apply, drop, pop, push, save,
           store commands.

           Quiet, suppress feedback messages.

       --
           This option is only valid for push command.

           Separates pathspec from options for disambiguation purposes.

       <pathspec>...
           This option is only valid for push command.

           The new stash entry records the modified states only for the
           files that match the pathspec. The index entries and working
           tree files are then rolled back to the state in HEAD only for
           these files, too, leaving files that do not match the
           pathspec intact.

           For more details, see the pathspec entry in gitglossary(7).

       <stash>
           This option is only valid for apply, branch, drop, pop, show
           commands.

           A reference of the form stash@{<revision>}. When no <stash>
           is given, the latest stash is assumed (that is, stash@{0}).

DISCUSSION         top

       A stash entry is represented as a commit whose tree records the
       state of the working directory, and its first parent is the
       commit at HEAD when the entry was created. The tree of the second
       parent records the state of the index when the entry is made, and
       it is made a child of the HEAD commit. The ancestry graph looks
       like this:

                  .----W
                 /    /
           -----H----I

       where H is the HEAD commit, I is a commit that records the state
       of the index, and W is a commit that records the state of the
       working tree.

EXAMPLES         top

       Pulling into a dirty tree
           When you are in the middle of something, you learn that there
           are upstream changes that are possibly relevant to what you
           are doing. When your local changes do not conflict with the
           changes in the upstream, a simple git pull will let you move
           forward.

           However, there are cases in which your local changes do
           conflict with the upstream changes, and git pull refuses to
           overwrite your changes. In such a case, you can stash your
           changes away, perform a pull, and then unstash, like this:

               $ git pull
                ...
               file foobar not up to date, cannot merge.
               $ git stash
               $ git pull
               $ git stash pop

       Interrupted workflow
           When you are in the middle of something, your boss comes in
           and demands that you fix something immediately.
           Traditionally, you would make a commit to a temporary branch
           to store your changes away, and return to your original
           branch to make the emergency fix, like this:

               # ... hack hack hack ...
               $ git switch -c my_wip
               $ git commit -a -m "WIP"
               $ git switch master
               $ edit emergency fix
               $ git commit -a -m "Fix in a hurry"
               $ git switch my_wip
               $ git reset --soft HEAD^
               # ... continue hacking ...

           You can use git stash to simplify the above, like this:

               # ... hack hack hack ...
               $ git stash
               $ edit emergency fix
               $ git commit -a -m "Fix in a hurry"
               $ git stash pop
               # ... continue hacking ...

       Testing partial commits
           You can use git stash push --keep-index when you want to make
           two or more commits out of the changes in the work tree, and
           you want to test each change before committing:

               # ... hack hack hack ...
               $ git add --patch foo            # add just first part to the index
               $ git stash push --keep-index    # save all other changes to the stash
               $ edit/build/test first part
               $ git commit -m 'First part'     # commit fully tested change
               $ git stash pop                  # prepare to work on all other changes
               # ... repeat above five steps until one commit remains ...
               $ edit/build/test remaining parts
               $ git commit foo -m 'Remaining parts'

       Saving unrelated changes for future use
           When you are in the middle of massive changes and you find
           some unrelated issue that you don’t want to forget to fix,
           you can do the change(s), stage them, and use git stash push
           --staged to stash them out for future use. This is similar to
           committing the staged changes, only the commit ends-up being
           in the stash and not on the current branch.

               # ... hack hack hack ...
               $ git add --patch foo           # add unrelated changes to the index
               $ git stash push --staged       # save these changes to the stash
               # ... hack hack hack, finish current changes ...
               $ git commit -m 'Massive'       # commit fully tested changes
               $ git switch fixup-branch       # switch to another branch
               $ git stash pop                 # to finish work on the saved changes

       Recovering stash entries that were cleared/dropped erroneously
           If you mistakenly drop or clear stash entries, they cannot be
           recovered through the normal safety mechanisms. However, you
           can try the following incantation to get a list of stash
           entries that are still in your repository, but not reachable
           any more:

               git fsck --unreachable |
               grep commit | cut -d\  -f3 |
               xargs git log --merges --no-walk --grep=WIP

CONFIGURATION         top

       Everything below this line in this section is selectively
       included from the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the
       same as what’s found there:

       stash.showIncludeUntracked
           If this is set to true, the git stash show command will show
           the untracked files of a stash entry. Defaults to false. See
           the description of the show command in git-stash(1).

       stash.showPatch
           If this is set to true, the git stash show command without an
           option will show the stash entry in patch form. Defaults to
           false. See the description of the show command in
           git-stash(1).

       stash.showStat
           If this is set to true, the git stash show command without an
           option will show a diffstat of the stash entry. Defaults to
           true. See the description of the show command in
           git-stash(1).

SEE ALSO         top

       git-checkout(1), git-commit(1), git-reflog(1), git-reset(1),
       git-switch(1)

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-20.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Git 2.43.0.174.g055bb6         2023-12-20                   GIT-STASH(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)git-config(1)git-merge(1)git-pull(1)git-reset(1)git-stash(1)git-worktree(1)stg(1)gitworkflows(7)