One of my favorite git commands is git stash
. I use it all the time. I like how it helps me clean my working directory but still save my work for later.
One downside of using git stash
, though, is that it stashes away all files. What I need in some cases is to stash only a few selected files or a single directory. I’ve needed this in several occasions but never really tried to research it (yeah, call me lazy).
Until a couple of days ago - that’s how stories unfold - when I finally visited the official docs for stash! I found an option called <pathspec>
. This option can be used with the push
command to specify a path. Git will then stash all files that match the path.
How does it look in practice? Say I have the following files in my working directory:
js/custom.js
css/custom.css
Here are a few use cases I might have:
# to stash just the `custom.js` file
git stash push js/custom.js
# to stash the `custom.js` file with a custom message
git stash push js/custom.js -m "Best feature ever"
# to stash only the files in the `js` directory
git stash push js/
I’m quite happy about discovering this. I’ll definitely use it in my work. Hope you learned something new today as well. 😉
P.S. I’ve created a Git Cheatsheet extension for VS Code that can help you with remembering some common git commands.
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