I sometimes run in a problem similar to http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2008/10/15/3667644/thread There are some ignored files which I want neither track nor throw away; I'm just happy to have them and keep them out of version control. Unfortunately, there weren't ignored in the old branch. I'd be quite happy with non-destructive switching like "checkout everything what doesn't overwrite an untracked file", so I would end in the old branch with a dirty working tree. Is it possible? -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html