Undo git stash pop that results in merge conflict

Question

I began making changes to my codebase, not realizing I was on an old topic branch. To transfer them, I wanted to stash them and then apply them to a new branch off of master. I used git stash pop to transfer work-in-progress changes to this new branch, forgetting that I hadn't pulled new changes into master before creating the new branch. This resulted in a bunch of merge conflicts and loss of a clean stash of my changes (since I used pop).

Once I recreate the new branch correctly, how I can I recover my stashed changes to apply them properly?

Git is smart enough not to drop a stash if it doesn't apply cleanly — Snowmanzzz, Mar 15 '22 at 08:18

score 896 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 05 '19 at 14:48

896

As it turns out, Git is smart enough not to drop a stash if it doesn't apply cleanly. I was able to get to the desired state with the following steps:

To unstage the merge conflicts: git reset HEAD . (note the trailing dot)
To save the conflicted merge (just in case): git stash
To return to master: git checkout master
To pull latest changes: git fetch upstream; git merge upstream/master
To correct my new branch: git checkout new-branch; git rebase master
To apply the correct stashed changes (now 2nd on the stack): git stash apply stash@{1}

edited Jul 05 '19 at 14:48

Rakmo

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answered Mar 05 '14 at 19:25

acjay

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Excellent thanks! #6 is really the answer I was looking for. Could add a `git stash drop` as the last step to get rid of the unwanted stash from #2. – austinmarton Oct 17 '14 at 00:39
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#2 will not work if there are unmerged paths, it will instead output the error described here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5483213/fatal-git-write-tree-error-building-trees – Étienne Apr 30 '15 at 14:25
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Not totally true--Git will keep the stash in the stash list if it failed to apply cleanly. See these docs about `git stash pop`: "Applying the state can fail with conflicts; in this case, it is not removed from the stash list. You need to resolve the conflicts by hand and call `git stash drop` manually afterwards." (https://git-scm.com/docs/git-stash) – Carolyn Conway Sep 13 '16 at 19:46
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This doesn't work properly. :-( It undid the changes but it left a bunch of noise in my files like: `<<<<<<< Updated upstream` `>>>>>>> Stashed changes` – Jez Nov 13 '17 at 00:13
@Jez You might try `git checkout -- .` to get back to a clean state. Or `git stash`, if you're worried you might possibly lose something important. – acjay Nov 13 '17 at 14:50
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Strange how this answer and the question are posted on the **exact** same minute – call-me May 18 '18 at 07:40
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@call-me This is something I think people should actually do more often! Notice how the "Ask a question" form has a checkbox that let's you answer your own question in the same form :). This happens to me sometimes when I'm in the process of authoring a question that is stumping me, but in trying to tune the question to be good for StackOverflow, I end up figuring out the solution. This was a while ago, so I don't remember if that was the case here, but I'm guessing that's what happened. – acjay May 18 '18 at 14:35
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@acjay Exactly! Sometimes I come to Stackoverflow to write a question when I'm stuck because the process of making sure I write a good question often helps me answer it myself (or even just find the correct question) :) – LeonardChallis Apr 26 '19 at 12:25
Some shells need additional quotes for #6: git stash apply 'stash@{1}', otherwise you get the error: unknown option: -encodedCommand – Stefanos Kargas Nov 07 '19 at 09:14
this answer is unnecessarily complex because it's involving branches, and they were not mentioned in the question – knocte Apr 22 '20 at 10:07
Step 1.5) `git add --all` – None Jun 11 '20 at 22:44
Step 4 could also be `git pull origin master`. Does the same, but is a bit more concise – user2428118 Jul 27 '20 at 20:07

flori · Answer 2 · 2020-06-18T20:40:17.293

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Luckily git stash pop does not change the stash in the case of a conflict!

So nothing, to worry about, just clean up your code and try it again.

Say your codebase was clean before, you could go back to that state with: git checkout -f
Then do the stuff you forgot, e.g. git merge missing-branch
After that just fire git stash pop again and you get the same stash, that conflicted before.

Keep in mind: The stash is safe, however, uncommitted changes in the working directory are of course not. They can get messed up.

edited Jun 18 '20 at 20:40

answered Dec 06 '15 at 21:05

flori

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What I understand is that you can simply cleanup and pop again, but you can't *undo* it. If the pop gets mixed with other uncommitted changes, then you have to clean up manually. – haridsv Mar 24 '17 at 06:22
This is a very simple solution and worked great for me. It assumes that you can revert everything that has changed locally (there were no changes before/after the stash was popped) which I think works for most situations. If you needed to save some additional changes that happened before realizing that this was a problem, you should be able to commit those files before forcing a checkout in most cases. – Project707 Jul 21 '17 at 22:39
This was not the case for me. I called `git stash pop` it attempted to auto-merge, conflicted, and kept it. – Trevor Hickey Aug 13 '18 at 21:49
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@TrevorHickey The point of this answer was that the stash stays as it is in case of a conflict, that you can call `git stash pop` as often you need until it ends without a conflict. So after your conflict, yes, the working directory is in mess, however, you can clean it up and call `git stash pop` again. – flori Aug 14 '18 at 07:35
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this command to undo last stash apply is very useful: `git checkout -f` ! – Lafi Feb 19 '19 at 15:41
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what does git checkout -f mean? – Aparna Jun 11 '19 at 08:52
@WylliamJudd I feel sorry! Which part didn't work? What happened? – flori Aug 31 '20 at 20:56
I was partially wrong. The stash that had some of my work was @1, not pop (not sure why exactly). However, the new files weren't included in that stash. I'm sure I did something more convoluted that messed this up. – Wylliam Judd Aug 31 '20 at 22:51
`git checkout -f branchname` means "checkout branchname, and f = force, meaning I know there are uncommitted changes where I am right now, I don't care just dump everything. Since `git stash pop` doesn't actually "pop" if there are conflicts, I was able to do the force checkout and then `git stash pop` again on the correct branch. Easy peasy. – Mike K Jul 22 '21 at 22:09

score 53 · Answer 3 · edited May 28 '22 at 17:46

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git reset --merge

The simplest command, it works everywhere including git stash pop.

Careful! You'll lose all changes on untracked files.

edited May 28 '22 at 17:46

Sergey Vyacheslavovich Brunov

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answered Apr 14 '21 at 21:21

Gabriel Petersson

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Careful here! You'll lose all changes on untracked files. – Ebram Shehata May 09 '21 at 06:41
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@EbramShehata lol dam I read your comment after – standielpls Jun 03 '21 at 22:20
And you'll lose all changes on staged, tracked files too it seems. – enocom Jul 23 '21 at 21:40

score 41 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 30 '19 at 22:30

Instructions here are a little complicated so I'm going to offer something more straightforward:

git reset HEAD --hard Abandon all changes to the current branch
... Perform intermediary work as necessary
git stash pop Re-pop the stash again at a later date when you're ready

score 34 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 12 '20 at 07:05

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git checkout -f

must work, if your previous state is clean.

answered Feb 12 '20 at 07:05

Allahbakash.G

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Beware–you'll lose all untracked changes to your files. – Scrotch Nov 18 '21 at 17:09

Undo git stash pop that results in merge conflict

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