Question

I made a bunch of changes to files in a git repository. Before I committed anything I was asked to commit some other files someone else had for me (coming from an SVN repository). I dropped those files into my project folder, picked them from amongst all of the changed files from earlier and committed them. Now I need to Sync the branch to get these to move to Github but when I try to sync I get “Uncommitted Changes. Please commit your changes before syncing”.

I assume this refers to all of the files I had changed previously? However, I do not want those so be committed… they are not ready. I only want to commit this small subset of files. What does one do in this situation? How do I move all of the changes I’ve made that I do NOT want to be a part of this commit out of the way, for lack of a better word, and get the part I DO want to change into the github repository?

I’m using the GitHub App but can do it from the command line if needed… just not sure what needs to be done.

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Here are some screenshots to make it clearer:

At the bottom of my list of changed files is the commit I want to move:

Trying to get that commit to move over to github I click the Sync button and get:

What is the solution? How do I get these “uncommitted changes” out of the way? Obviously I am new to git so I am not clear on the correct approach. Thanks.

Answer 1

I don’t know if the GitHub app provides this functionality (though I would kind of expect it to), but git has a function called “git stash” which takes all your uncommitted changes and stashes them away in a special place. This leaves you with a pristine working copy (without those changes), where you can do whatever you need to, and then use git stash pop (or git stash apply) to reapply your uncommitted changes. I encourage you to read the manpage.