Brian Scott Dobrovodsky <brian@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > It was a misunderstanding of Git's work flow. By switching from 'an > un-committed demo' to a previously committed master: I was expecting > Git to give me the content last commited to master while at the same > time preserving(without having to commit) the changes made in demo. > Intuitively, this is how I expected Git to function. You aren't the only one. Several of my day-job coworkers have also thought the same thing. Only they use git-gui, and have never read any of the Git docs. Because nobody ever reads the docs. Nope, not if you can just dial my extension and browbeat me into giving you an answer to your most urgent question. :-\ My point is just that some people actually assume that work done while having one branch checked out is related to that branch and that branch alone and that switching a branch should put that work on hold. Unfortunately for me some of these people at day-job have also just assumed Git can read their mind and forget to switch branches at the proper times, resulting in unrelated work mashed together for days straight (and criss-crossed merge to hell and back) before they call me and say "MAKEITWORKNOW". </rant> It isn't unreasonable to want Git to save uncommitted work for the current branch and then you switch to another, ending up with a clean working directory when you finally get there. Today we have git-stash to help you with this, but I'm thinking maybe we want to connect git-checkout with it? I see `-s` isn't used as an option yet. What about: $ git init $ echo master >file $ git add file && git commit -m initial $ git checkout -b demo ; # switch to demo $ echo demo >file ; # dirty the tree $ git checkout -s master ; # stash and switch to master Uncommitted changes stashed on branch 'demo'. $ cat file master $ git checkout demo ; # return to demo Uncommitted changes were stashed for 'demo'. To recover them now run: git stash apply -s $ cat file master $ git stash apply -s $ cat file demo The new `git stash apply -s` here is defined to find the most recent stash for the current branch (which may not be the top of the stash!) and apply it. If you know you want to just reapply the stash when you switch back we could define `git checkout -a` (also unused) to automatically execute `git stash apply -s` if a stash is available for the destination branch. Just thinking out loud. I probably won't code up a patch that implements this but I don't think it would be too difficult for someone else who wants to get their feet wet. -- Shawn. - 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