Re: Stashing individual files

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Tue, Jan 03, 2012 at 10:32:02AM +1100, Chris Leong wrote:

> Thanks for making such a wonderful product. I find the stash command
> really useful, but it doesn't work very well when I just need to
> temporarily revert one or two files. I know that there is the
> interactive command, but if you have modified a large number of files,
> then it takes quite a bit of effort. Is there any way I can define an
> alias, stashfiles, so that I can just type git stashfiles file1 file2?
> Also, please consider adding such a feature into a future version.

I have sometimes wanted this, too. One problem is that the arguments in
a "stash save" get sucked into the message. I really wish it were:

  git stash save [-m <msg>] [[--] <pathspec...>]

which would match other git commands. And related, it would be nice to
have:

  git stash foo.c bar.c

but that conflicts with our safety-valve to avoid accidentally stashing
when no command is given.

For now, we could probably do it like this:

  git stash save [<message>] [-- <pathspec...>]

IOW, make the "--" a requirement for specifying filenames. The only
regression is that "--" as a single argument can no longer be used in
stash messages. So this works now:

  git stash save working on foo -- needs bar

but would be interpreted under my proposal as stashing "needs" and "bar"
with the message "working on foo". You would instead have to spell it:

  git stash save "working on foo -- needs bar"

I think that would be OK compromise, though. I'd rather not introduce a
whole new "stashfiles" command (or even a new subcommand of stash) if we
can avoid it.

-Peff