Explaining Git Stash

The concern is documenting the point and usage of git stash

Pavol Kutaj

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Sep 15, 2022

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NOUN
stash (plural stashes)

- A collection, sometimes hidden; a reserve.
    They had quite a stash of food saved up for emergencies.
- (US, slang, informal, African-American Vernacular) A place where drugs are stored.
    The dealers managed to store the dope in the stash just in time to avoid being caught by the police.

VERB
stash (third-person singular simple present stashes, present participle stashing, simple past and past participle stashed)

- To hide or store away for later use. 
    He stashed his liquor in the cabinet under the bar.

1. THE FOURTH SPACE

• there are 4 spaces of git,
• the work happens usually between the three of them:
  working area → index → repository
• stash is the fourth area
• there is only 1 command to handle stash

git stash

• you have to be very explicit within the single command
• git stash is all yours — the data there will not change unless you really want to
• it is even more yours than the working area and isolated from the 3 main areas
• for example, say you want to work on something else
• …but, you have some work already staged within a branch
• → you can store all your changes in the stash and they will stay there and wait for you to pick it up

2. CREATE

git stash save --include-untracked

• save the current status by or just

git stash --include-untracked

• also include files that are not tracked and are entirely new. by default, stash ignores untracked files
• git takes all the data from working area and stage → add them to the stash
• aligns the data from working area and stage with the current commit

3. ACCESS

git stash list

• the stash is a multiple clibboard where you can store things for later
• each item gets a serial-id

▶ git stash list
stash@{0}: WIP on newMainMenu: 3179211 publish action executed and links updated

4. RECOVER

git stash apply

• without passing the name of the item, it applies it to the most recent one by default

5. POP

git stash pop

• this deletes the stash when recovering it

6. CLEAR

git stash clear

• run git stash clear to clean the entire stash

7. VSCODE EXTENSION

• Git Stash — Visual Studio Marketplace
• assign shortcuts for both the creation and the recovery