How to Recover Stashed Uncommitted Changes
I Had Some Uncommitted Changes in My Development Branch and I Stashed Them Using Git Stash, but There Were Some Changes Which Were Very Important Among Those...
I had some uncommitted changes in my development branch and I stashed them using git stash, but there were some changes which were very important among those stashed ones. Is there any way to get back those changes?
Also, I have made some changes on top of the stashed code files since.
Is there any chance I can retrieve the stashed changes to a new branch if possible?
6 Answers
The easy answer to the easy question is git stash apply
Just check out the branch you want your changes on, and then git stash apply. Then use git diff to see the result.
After you're all done with your changes—the apply looks good and you're sure you don't need the stash any more—then use git stash drop to get rid of it.
I always suggest using git stash apply rather than git stash pop. The difference is that apply leaves the stash around for easy re-try of the apply, or for looking at, etc. If pop is able to extract the stash, it will immediately also drop it, and if you subsequently realize that you wanted to extract it somewhere else (in a different branch), or with --index, or some such, that's not so easy. If you apply, you get to choose when to drop.
It's all pretty minor one way or the other though, and for a newbie to Git, it should be about the same. (And you can skip all the rest of this!)
Marcus Vance is a cybersecurity auditor and technology writer dedicated to educating the public about online safety, data privacy regulations, enterprise security, and emerging cyber threats.
