Question

In Git, I have an experimental branch (EXP-12). I have done some changes there, but I am not ready for commit yet. I need to make adjustments on master.

I go to master.

Two cases are possible:

1. If I included my changes into index while on EXP-12, they will appear in index on master branch as well.
2. If I didn’t include my changes into index while on EXP-12, those files will appear as changes not staged for commit on master branch as well.

My problem is that I want everything on master and EXP-12 to be separate. I want to do some “experimental” changes on EXP-12 > go to master > do changes on master > stage everything for commit (git add -A) > commit > switch back to EXP-12 and continue experiments. Now if I do that my commit at the master branch will include all changes done on EXP-12.

What is the logic behind that? Or am I missing something?

Answer 1

A classic solution to this problem is to use git stash – when you’re on EXP-12 you can do:

git stash save --keep-index "Some work-in-progress on EXP-12"

… then change branch to master as usual, do some work, change back, and apply that most recent stash:

git checkout master

[... do some stuff ...]

git checkout EXP-12

git stash pop

However, I personally prefer to create a work-in-progress commit, and later either:

• Change it with git commit --amend
• Move the branch back to the previous commit, but leaving all your work as unstaged changes with: git reset HEAD^
• … or use git rebase -i <EARLIER-COMMIT> to squash several work-in-progress commits together.

The advantage of creating an actual commit over using the stash is that you can apply a stash on any commit, not just the one you saved it at, whereas a normal commit moves forward that branch and is tied to the earlier commits.