Stash only one file out of multiple files that hav

Question

How can I stash only one of multiple changed files on my branch?

Answer 1

Solution

Local changes:

• file_A (modified) not staged
• file_B (modified) not staged
• file_C (modified) not staged

To create a stash "my_stash" with only the changes on file_C:

1. git add file_C
2. git stash save --keep-index temp_stash
3. git stash save my_stash
4. git stash pop stash@#{1}

Done.

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Explanation

1. add file_C to the staging area
2. create a temporary stash named "temp_stash" and keep the changes on file_C
3. create the wanted stash ("my_stash") with only the changes on file_C
4. apply the changes in "temp_stash" (file_A and file_B) on your local code and delete the stash

You can use git status between the steps to see what is going on.

Answer 2

Warning

As noted in the comments, this puts everything into the stash, both staged and unstaged. The --keep-index just leaves the index alone after the stash is done. This can cause merge conflicts when you later pop the stash.

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This will stash everything that you haven't previously added. Just git add the things you want to keep, then run it.

git stash --keep-index

For example, if you want to split an old commit into more than one changeset, you can use this procedure:

1. git rebase -i <last good commit>
2. Mark some changes as edit.
3. git reset HEAD^
4. git add <files you want to keep in this change>
5. git stash --keep-index
6. Fix things up as necessary. Don't forget to git add any changes.
7. git commit
8. git stash pop
9. Repeat, from #5, as necessary.
10. git rebase --continue

Answer 3

In this situation I git add -p (interactive), git commit -m blah and then stash what's left if necessary.

Answer 4

Every answer here is so complicated...

What about this to "stash":

git diff /dir/to/file/file_to_stash > /tmp/stash.patch
git checkout -- /dir/to/file/file_to_stash

This to pop the file change back:

git apply /tmp/stash.patch

Exact same behavior as stashing one file and popping it back in.

Answer 5

Another way to do this:

# Save everything
git stash 

# Re-apply everything, but keep the stash
git stash apply

git checkout <"files you don't want in your stash">

# Save only the things you wanted saved
git stash

# Re-apply the original state and drop it from your stash
git stash apply stash@{1}
git stash drop stash@{1}

git checkout <"files you put in your stash">

I came up with this after I (once again) came to this page and didn't like the first two answers (the first answer just doesn't answer the question and I didn't quite like working with the -p interactive mode).

The idea is the same as what @VonC suggested using files outside the repository, you save the changes you want somewhere, remove the changes you don't want in your stash, and then re-apply the changes you moved out of the way. However, I used the git stash as the "somewhere" (and as a result, there's one extra step at the end: removing the cahnges you put in the stash, because you moved these out of the way as well).

Answer 6

Update (2/14/2015) - I've rewritten the script a bit, to better handle the case of conflicts, which should now be presented as unmerged conflicts rather than .rej files.

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I often find it more intuitive to do the inverse of @bukzor's approach. That is, to stage some changes, and then stash only those staged changes.

Unfortunately, git doesn't offer a git stash --only-index or similar, so I whipped up a script to do this.

#!/bin/sh

# first, go to the root of the git repo
cd `git rev-parse --show-toplevel`

# create a commit with only the stuff in staging
INDEXTREE=`git write-tree`
INDEXCOMMIT=`echo "" | git commit-tree $INDEXTREE -p HEAD`

# create a child commit with the changes in the working tree
git add -A
WORKINGTREE=`git write-tree`
WORKINGCOMMIT=`echo "" | git commit-tree $WORKINGTREE -p $INDEXCOMMIT`

# get back to a clean state with no changes, staged or otherwise
git reset -q --hard

# Cherry-pick the index changes back to the index, and stash.
# This cherry-pick is guaranteed to succeed
git cherry-pick -n $INDEXCOMMIT
git stash

# Now cherry-pick the working tree changes. This cherry-pick may fail
# due to conflicts
git cherry-pick -n $WORKINGCOMMIT

CONFLICTS=`git ls-files -u`
if test -z "$CONFLICTS"; then
    # If there are no conflicts, it's safe to reset, so that
    # any previously unstaged changes remain unstaged
    #
    # However, if there are conflicts, then we don't want to reset the files
    # and lose the merge/conflict info.
    git reset -q
fi

You can save the above script as git-stash-index somewhere on your path, and can then invoke it as git stash-index

# <hack hack hack>
git add <files that you want to stash>
git stash-index

Now the stash contains a new entry that only contains the changes you had staged, and your working tree still contains any unstaged changes.

In some cases, the working tree changes may depend on the index changes, so when you stash the index changes, the working tree changes have a conflict. In this case, you'll get the usual unmerged conflicts that you can resolve with git merge/git mergetool/etc.