Re: Can't git stash after using git add -N

Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org> writes:

I think this is unfortunately one of the fundamental limitations that comes from the way how "stash" is implemented. It uses three tree objects (i.e. HEAD's tree that represents where you started at, the tree that results by writing the index out as a tree, and another tree that would result if you added all the changes you made to the working tree to the index and then writing the resulting index out as a tree), but there are some states in the index that cannot be represented as a tree object. "I know I would eventually want to add this new path, but I cannot decide with what contents just yet" aka "git add -N" is one of them (the other notable state that cannot be represented as a tree object is paths with unresolved conflicts in the index).

"git rm --cached" the path and then running "stash save" would be a workaround, but then you'd probably need to use "--untracked" hack when you run "stash save" if you are stashing because you are going to do something to the same path in the cleaned-up working tree.