Using git stash

In this example, we explore the git stash command and learn how we can use it to quickly put away uncommitted changes and retrieve these again. This can be useful when being interrupted with an urgent task and you are not yet ready to commit the work you currently have in your working directory. With the git stash command, you save the state of your current working directory with/without a staging area and restore a clean state of the working tree.

Getting ready

In this example, we'll use the cookbook-tips-tricks repository. We'll use the master branch, but before we are ready to try the stash command, we need to create some changes in the working directory and the staging area:

$ git clone https://github.com/dvaske/cookbook-tips-tricks.git
$ cd cookbook-tips-tricks
$ git checkout master

Make some changes to foo and add them to the staging area:

$ echo "Just another unfinished line" >> foo
$ git add foo

Make some changes to bar and create a new file:

$ echo "Another line...