How to name and retrieve a stash by name in git?

I was always under the impression that you could give a stash a name by doing git stash save stashname, which you could later on apply by doing git stash apply stashname. But it seems that in this case all that happens is that stashname will be used as the stash description.

Is there no way to actually name a stash? If not, what would you recommend to achieve equivalent functionality? Essentially I have a small stash which I would periodically like to apply, but don't want to always have to hunt in git stash list what its actual stash number is.

Solution 1:

This is how you do it:

git stash push -m "my_stash"

Where "my_stash" is the stash name.

Some more useful things to know: All the stashes are stored in a stack. Type:

git stash list

This will list down all your stashes.

To apply a stash and remove it from the stash stack, type:

git stash pop stash@{n}

To apply a stash and keep it in the stash stack, type:

git stash apply stash@{n}

Where n is the index of the stashed change.

Notice that you can apply a stash and keep it in the stack by using the stash name:

git stash apply my_stash_name

Solution 2:

git stash save is deprecated as of 2.15.x/2.16, instead you can use git stash push -m "message"

You can use it like this:

git stash push -m "message"

where "message" is your note for that stash.

In order to retrieve the stash you can use: git stash list. This will output a list like this, for example:

stash@{0}: On develop: perf-spike
stash@{1}: On develop: node v10

Then you simply use apply giving it the stash@{index}:

git stash apply stash@{1}

References git stash man page

Solution 3:

If you are just looking for a lightweight way to save some or all of your current working copy changes and then reapply them later at will, consider a patch file:

# save your working copy changes
git diff > some.patch

# re-apply it later
git apply some.patch

Every now and then I wonder if I should be using stashes for this and then I see things like the insanity above and I'm content with what I'm doing :)