So you're not using checkout, reset, and diff?

amerkhalid · on April 11, 2018

Good point, forgot about checkout, diff, clone, blame, add, rm, rebase, init, and probably a few more.

Haven't used reset personally though but only when trying to fix someone's repo.

e12e · on April 11, 2018

Or fetch?

OJFord · on April 11, 2018

I think a lot of people ignore fetch and only ever pull.

e12e · on April 11, 2018

I think it's the most important sources of my cognitive dissonance around git. It strengthens the illusion that a working directly is somehow related to a git store, which it really isn't.

You have a working directly/checkout - that can be: identical (apart from ignored files) to some version in git; or different.

If it's different ; some or all changes can be marked for storing in the git repo - most commonly as a new commit.

It's a bit unfortunate that the repo typically is inside your work directory/checkout - under '.git' along with some files like hooks, that are not in the repo at all...

TomK32 · on April 11, 2018

But you'd have to stash before pull. At least with my config where a pull will rebase automatically.

OJFord · on April 11, 2018

I use `git config pull.rebase true` too, but that doesn't mean you _have_ to stash first, just as rebase manually wouldn't - depends if there's a conflict.

Same is true of merge-based pull.

e12e · on April 11, 2018

Except for saving some typing, is there any benefit to stash over local branches?

In other words, shouldn't git just fix ux for branches and rip out stash?

OJFord · on April 25, 2018

So "some typing" would be:

    # git stash:
    prev_ref="$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)"
    git checkout -b wip-stash
    git add .
    git commit -m 'wip stuff'
    git checkout "$prev_ref"
    
    # git stash pop:
    git checkout wip-stash -- .
    git checkout -D wip-stash

It's quite a considerable saving. I suppose by "fix UX" you mean make it so the saving would be less anyway, but I think really they're just conceptually different:

    - branch: pointer to a line of history, i.e. a commit and inherently its ancestors
    - stash: a single commit-like dump of patches

If stashing disappeared from git tomorrow, I think I'd use orphan commits rather than branches to replace it.

_pmf_ · on April 11, 2018

pull == "just fuck my shit up"