Question

when switching branches, I noticed that sometimes my local changes to the current branch is automatically kept in the branch switched to, it will show a message like this :

M <source file name>

But sometimes, it tells me I need to stash my local changes first.

Why is the behavior not consistent? and Is there a way to force it automatically move the local changes to the new branch because I constantly modify the wrong branch.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Git will re-apply the current changes in the worktree to the new branch if it can do so without any problems, i.e. the same file was not modified between the current branch (HEAD) and the branch being switched to.