Question

How can I stash a specific file leaving the others currently modified out of the stash I am about to save?

For example, if git status gives me this:

younker % gst      
# On branch master
# Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 1 commit.
#
# Changes not staged for commit:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#   modified:   app/controllers/cart_controller.php
#   modified:   app/views/cart/welcome.thtml
#
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

and I only want to stash app/views/cart/welcome.thtml, how would I do that? Something like (but of course this does not work):

git stash save welcome_cart app/views/cart/welcome.thtml

Answer 1

EDIT: Since git 2.13, there is a command to save a specific path to the stash: git stash push <path>. For example:

git stash push -m welcome_cart app/views/cart/welcome.thtml

OLD ANSWER:

You can do that using git stash --patch (or git stash -p) — you’ll enter interactive mode where you’ll be presented with each hunk that was changed. Use n to skip the files that you don’t want to stash, y when you encounter the one that you want to stash, and q to quit and leave the remaining hunks unstashed. a will stash the shown hunk and the rest of the hunks in that file.

Not the most user-friendly approach, but it gets the work done if you really need it.