making "git stash" safer to use

From: Bruno Haible <bruno@clisp.org>
Date: Oct 3, 2007, 21:31 UTC
Message-ID: <200710032331.41385.bruno@clisp.org>
In-Reply-To: <47023699.3080606@byu.net>

Hi,

Through a simple typo I lost modifications to 20 files:

Show 5 quoted lines

> >>>     $ git stash
> >>>     $ git pull
> >>>     $ git stash apply
> >>>     $ git stash clean              # typo!
> >>>     $ git stash clear              # fatal correction to typo!

It is just too easy to lose your modifications by using "git stash".

Eric Blake further says:

> While we're at it, I wish 'git stash clear' would take an optional
> argument that says which stash(es) to clear, rather than blindly clearing
> the entire stash.

It would help if git would store which of the stashes were applied since they were created and which were not. A stash that was not yet applied must be considered "precious", whereas a stash that was applied is redundant, right?

According these lines, how about
  1) changing "git stash clear" to remove only the redundant stashes,
     (or alternatively: let it fail if there is at least one precious stash),
  2) adding an option -f, so that "git stash -f clear" clears all stashes,
     including the precious ones.

The rationale is that humans are bad at remembering the state of something. Therefore instead of having a command that is commonly used in one state and dangerous in the other state, better have two different commands - one for the common case, and one for the dangerous one. Like "rm" and "rm -f".

Bruno