RE: Git stash certain files

[Caleb Dougherty <caleb_dougherty@keysight.com>]

Hi,

Let me know if I should post this somewhere else, but having used git now for a couple years in my work environment, and having come from years of TFS usage, I still find that I want the ability to "shelve" certain file changes for later.

My workflow is to create a personal branch and make changes to different parts of our codebase, and then stage certain files (not all) that are ready, and then commit them.  Sometimes I need to undo certain files in my working directory but keep the changes for later.

Git stash will kind of allow that, but it is messy since it snapshots all my checked out files and I have to do several commands to get the operation of "just stash these few files."

Here is my "shelve" command.  Stage the files you want to shelve and then:
                git commit -m '%1'
                git switch -C shelveset/%username%/!shelvename!
                git switch @{-1}
                git reset --keep HEAD~

Here is my "unshelve" command:
	set branch=shelveset/%username%/%1
	git cherry-pick %branch%
	git reset HEAD~
	git branch -D %branch%

It would be nice if this were built into the stage command as an option (to only stash staged files), or perhaps a new shelve/unshelve set of commands could be added.  The additional niceties of shelve/unshelve is that it is on a branch that can be pushed to a remote (so I don't lose it in a moment of absentmindedness or computer failure) and potentially unshelved by someone else ("Hey Joe, take a look at my code on shelveset xyz").

P.s. I cannot easily use the usual git workflow where you only do X feature change on X feature branch.  I work on multiple features in parallel and cannot be switching branches frequently or I will incur too much overhead (not only running the commands to do the switch).  

Regards,
Caleb