From: Phillip Wood Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:01:29 GMT Subject: Re: Lost files after git stash && git stash pop Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20230722214433.3xfoebf7my5wsihf@tb-raspi4> On 22/07/2023 22:44, Torsten Bögershausen wrote: > On Fri, Jul 21, 2023 at 07:31:53PM +0200, Till Friebe wrote: >> Thank you for filling out a Git bug report! >> Please answer the following questions to help us understand your issue. >> >> What did you do before the bug happened? (Steps to reproduce your issue) >> ``` >> git init >> mkdir README >> touch README/README >> git add . >> git commit -m "Init project" >> echo "Test" > README/README >> mv README/README README2 >> rmdir README >> mv README2 README >> git stash >> git stash pop >> ``` >> >> What did you expect to happen? (Expected behavior) >> I expected that after the `git stash pop` the README file would be back. >> >> What happened instead? (Actual behavior) >> This README with "Test" file was deleted and I lost 5 hours of work. > > That is always sad to hear, when work is lost. Indeed it is. Thanks Till for providing an easy reproducer. > However, I personally wonder if this is a bug or not. I think whenever git overwrites an untracked file without the user passing some option indicating that they want to do so it is a bug. For example "git checkout" refuses to overwrite untracked files by default. Sadly this seems to be a known bug in do_push_stash() where we are using "git reset --hard" to remove the stashed changes from the working copy. This was documented in 94b7f1563a (Comment important codepaths regarding nuking untracked files/dirs, 2021-09-27). The stash implementation does a lot of necessary forking of subprocesses, in this case I think it would be better to call unpack_trees() directly with UNPACK_RESET_PROTECT_UNTRACKED. Best Wishes Phillip > First, Git is told to track a file called README/README > Then the file is removed, without telling Git. > And a new, unkown file appers on disk (which collides with the name > of the directory) > > Using this sequence could have told Git, what is going on: > git mv README/README README2 > rmdir README > git mv README2 README > > (a temporary branch may be checked out, with the option > to merge-squash the final result) > > > An other alternative could be to tell `git stash` to care > about untracked file(s): > > git stash -u > git stash pop > > Which will refuse to apply the stash. > > A third alternative could be to keep the file inside an > editor, to have the content still available. > > However, it would/could be nice, if files are not simply deleted, > but saved into a "lost+found" folder, or a wastebasket kind of thing. > > But which files ? > Those that are untracked ? > They may be important (local config files, passwords, help scripts, ...) > or not (.o files from a C compiler). > > In some older discussions they had been named "precious" files. > But, as far as I remember, there was no easy solution. > In that sense I don't have a better answer. > Others may have. > > Thanks for reporting, it make me read [1] and come to the conclusion > that it is sometimes safer to checkout out a temporary branch, commit > everything and clean up later, rather than relying too much on > `git stash` > > > >> >> What's different between what you expected and what actually happened? >> The file doesn't exist anymore and I can't recover it. >> >> Anything else you want to add: >> This is just a reproducible example. >>