[feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Yuri]

I work in a very large repository, but all of it except for my stashed 
items can be re-downloaded from the remote URL.


Stash though is much smaller in size and is especially valuable. Its 
loss would be very expensive.


Could you please consider adding 'git stash export', 'git stash import' 
commands so that in case of an accidental repository loss stash can be 
imported from the external backup?


Thanks,

Yuri

RE: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Randall S. Becker]

On May 5, 2021 3:52 PM, Yuri wrote:
>Subject: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands
>to allow to backup stash externally
>
>I work in a very large repository, but all of it except for my stashed items can be
>re-downloaded from the remote URL.
>
>
>Stash though is much smaller in size and is especially valuable. Its
>loss would be very expensive.
>
>
>Could you please consider adding 'git stash export', 'git stash import'
>commands so that in case of an accidental repository loss stash can be
>imported from the external backup?

I would like to suggest another option: Teach clone and fetch to transfer stash commits. They are filtered out normally. It might be straightforward to preserve the stashed commits. A mirror approach is probably not appropriate since that needs the repo to be bare and Yuri's situation is unlikely to support that. So something like --include-stashes, which would be off by default.

As a side potential defect/bug, if you fetch refs/stash, git is happy to comply and reports the HEAD update and then loses it. git show-refs does not show the stash. What I saw on the fetch was (I only had untracked files in my stash to make things more painful) as follows in 2.29.1:

$ git fetch origin refs/stash
From /path-to-repo
 * branch              refs/stash -> FETCH_HEAD

-Randall

Re: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Yuri]

On 5/5/21 1:07 PM, Randall S. Becker wrote:
> I would like to suggest another option: Teach clone and fetch to transfer stash commits

This would make them public, which is not always desirable.

IMO both options should be implemented.


Yuri

Re: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Junio C Hamano]

"Randall S. Becker" <rsbecker@nexbridge.com> writes:

> I would like to suggest another option: Teach clone and fetch to
> transfer stash commits. They are filtered out normally. It might
> be straightforward to preserve the stashed commits. A mirror
> approach is probably not appropriate since that needs the repo to
> be bare and Yuri's situation is unlikely to support that. So
> something like --include-stashes, which would be off by default.

It would unfortunately not work, since stash is not implemented as a
set of regular refs.  Instead its entries are kept in reflogs.  And
because the reflog is treated as an entierly local matter, reflog
entries are not transfered across fetches and clones.

If stash are redesigned so that each of its entry becomes a separate
ref (e.g. refs/stash/0 refs/stash/1 refs/stash/2 ...), then

    git bundle stash.bndl $(git for-each-ref --format='%(refname)' refs/stash/\*)

might become the beginning of a viable implementation of "stash
export" (but note that the above does not list any stopping point of
the history traversal, so it is just the beginning and does not make
a practical solution).

Re: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Johannes Sixt]

Am 05.05.21 um 21:51 schrieb Yuri:
> I work in a very large repository, but all of it except for my stashed
> items can be re-downloaded from the remote URL.
> 
> 
> Stash though is much smaller in size and is especially valuable. Its
> loss would be very expensive.

I would argue that you are doing something wrong if your stashes are
particularly valuable. If you regularly revert temporary, but precious
work, then you should commit the work and mark it with a branch tip or tag.

> Could you please consider adding 'git stash export', 'git stash import'
> commands so that in case of an accidental repository loss stash can be
> imported from the external backup?

-- Hannes

Re: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Yuri]

On 5/5/21 11:07 PM, Johannes Sixt wrote:
> I would argue that you are doing something wrong if your stashes are
> particularly valuable. If you regularly revert temporary, but precious
> work, then you should commit the work and mark it with a branch tip or tag.
>

No, it is work in progress. I begin to work on some modification or 
update, discover some issue, and stash the update until this issue is 
resolved,

It could take days, weeks, months to resolve them.


Yuri

Re: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Johannes Sixt]

Am 06.05.21 um 08:12 schrieb Yuri:
> On 5/5/21 11:07 PM, Johannes Sixt wrote:
>> I would argue that you are doing something wrong if your stashes are
>> particularly valuable. If you regularly revert temporary, but precious
>> work, then you should commit the work and mark it with a branch tip or
>> tag.
>>
> 
> No, it is work in progress. I begin to work on some modification or
> update, discover some issue, and stash the update until this issue is
> resolved,
> 
> It could take days, weeks, months to resolve them.

I know. But, as I said, when you turn away from your current work, which
is precious, then you should make a commit, in particular, when you can
forsee that you might not be able to come back soon.

A 'git stash' is really only intended as a short-term
make-the-worktree-temporarily-clean auxiliary storage. It is not
intended as a long-term storage. For long-term storage, use branches.
"Short term" is measured in seconds (rebase --autostash), minutes,
perhaps hours, but certainly not weeks or months.

At least, that's how I understand (and use) it.

-- Hannes

Re: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Yuri]

On 5/5/21 11:43 PM, Johannes Sixt wrote:
> I know. But, as I said, when you turn away from your current work, which
> is precious, then you should make a commit, in particular, when you can
> forsee that you might not be able to come back soon.


How can I commit unfinished work? Commits are public, this would break 
things.

> For long-term storage, use branches.

Branches are too heavy-weight. They need merging. Sometimes several stash items need to be used together, which makes it inconvenient.

Yuri

Re: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Junio C Hamano]

Yuri <yuri@rawbw.com> writes:

> On 5/5/21 11:43 PM, Johannes Sixt wrote:
>> I know. But, as I said, when you turn away from your current work, which
>> is precious, then you should make a commit, in particular, when you can
>> forsee that you might not be able to come back soon.
>
>
> How can I commit unfinished work? Commits are public, this would break
> things.

Unlike centralized SCM like SVN and CVS, commits in Git are private
until you make them public by pushing, and you do not allow other
people to fetch/pull from the repository you actively work in.  If
your commits become public immediately after you make them, perhaps
there is a room in your workflow for vast improvement.

Re: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Yuri]

On 5/6/21 1:38 AM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Unlike centralized SCM like SVN and CVS, commits in Git are private
> until you make them public by pushing, and you do not allow other
> people to fetch/pull from the repository you actively work in.  If
> your commits become public immediately after you make them, perhaps
> there is a room in your workflow for vast improvement.


Let's say I make commit1, commit2, commit3 and then commit4.


How can I push only commit1 and commit3, but not commit2 and commit4?


Can I permanently hold some commits from being pushed while pushing others?


Yuri

Re: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Junio C Hamano]

Yuri <yuri@rawbw.com> writes:

> On 5/6/21 1:38 AM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Unlike centralized SCM like SVN and CVS, commits in Git are private
>> until you make them public by pushing, and you do not allow other
>> people to fetch/pull from the repository you actively work in.  If
>> your commits become public immediately after you make them, perhaps
>> there is a room in your workflow for vast improvement.
>
>
> Let's say I make commit1, commit2, commit3 and then commit4.
>
>
> How can I push only commit1 and commit3, but not commit2 and commit4?

You don't.

> Can I permanently hold some commits from being pushed while pushing others?

Yes, you arrange these unrelated things (e.g. if commit1 and commit3
can become ready to be used without commit2 and commit4, there is
*no* reason to build commit2 as a direct child of commit1 *AND*
build commit3 as a direct child of commit2) into multiple branches,
keep unrelated things separate and related things together, and push
the branch commit1 & commit3 are on (obviously in your example they
become ready to be consumed together while commit2 or commit4 are
not, so they wouldn't be on the same commit as commit2 or commit4).

Re: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Felipe Contreras]

Yuri wrote:
> On 5/6/21 1:38 AM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> > Unlike centralized SCM like SVN and CVS, commits in Git are private
> > until you make them public by pushing, and you do not allow other
> > people to fetch/pull from the repository you actively work in.  If
> > your commits become public immediately after you make them, perhaps
> > there is a room in your workflow for vast improvement.
> 
> Let's say I make commit1, commit2, commit3 and then commit4.
> 
> How can I push only commit1 and commit3, but not commit2 and commit4?

You create a separate branch "for-upstream" based on the parent of
commit 1.

Then you chery-pick commit 1 and commit 3.

You can leave the other branch as-is, and deal with that later, or you
can rebaste that temporary branch on top of "for-upstream".

Or you can rebase first, create a new branch from tmp~2, and then push
it.

> Can I permanently hold some commits from being pushed while pushing
> others?

Yes.

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Felipe Contreras]

Yuri wrote:
> On 5/5/21 11:43 PM, Johannes Sixt wrote:
> > I know. But, as I said, when you turn away from your current work, which
> > is precious, then you should make a commit, in particular, when you can
> > forsee that you might not be able to come back soon.
> 
> How can I commit unfinished work?

Just like that: `git commit`.

That's what you are doing anyway, whether you realize or not.

> Commits are public, this would break things.

No. Commits are most definitely not public. Not unless you do
`git push`, and only if you push to a public repository.

I have countless commits on local branches that nobody would every see.
Many on a "tmp" branch.

I also have many private repositories, which contain passwords and other
sensitive information. Again... Only for my eyes.

> > For long-term storage, use branches.
> 
> Branches are too heavy-weight.

No, each one is a single file consisting of 41 bytes.

A single stash takes about 200 bytes. Considerably more.

Compare:

 * .git/refs/heads/master
 * .git/logs/refs/stash

> They need merging. Sometimes several stash items need to be used
> together, which makes it inconvenient.

You mean like one stash item goes on top of another?

Like... Commits on a branch?


I think this boils down to a confussion of concepts. Stash items are
commits. The only real conceptual difference is that you did not
specify the message (-m tmp would do that trick).

Again. Check yourself; the commit is there:

 * git cat-file -p stash@{0}
 * git cat-file -p master

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Yuri]

On 5/6/21 1:40 AM, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> No. Commits are most definitely not public. Not unless you do
> `git push`, and only if you push to a public repository.
>
> I have countless commits on local branches that nobody would every see.
> Many on a "tmp" branch.


So you advocate to use branches? If branches are same or better than 
stash, why was the stash feature created?

Maybe it should be removed in favor of branches?


Yuri

Re: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Felipe Contreras]

Yuri wrote:
> On 5/6/21 1:40 AM, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> > No. Commits are most definitely not public. Not unless you do
> > `git push`, and only if you push to a public repository.
> >
> > I have countless commits on local branches that nobody would every see.
> > Many on a "tmp" branch.
> 
> So you advocate to use branches? If branches are same or better than 
> stash, why was the stash feature created?

Branches are for long-term sequences of useful commits.

Stashes are for short-term crappy commits.

They serve a different purpose.

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: [feature suggestion] Add 'git stash export', 'git stash import' commands to allow to backup stash externally

[Theodore Ts'o]

On Thu, May 06, 2021 at 01:45:41AM -0700, Yuri wrote:
> 
> So you advocate to use branches? If branches are same or better than stash,
> why was the stash feature created?
> 
> Maybe it should be removed in favor of branches?

Stash is actually *implemented* in terms of a branch and reflogs.
It's syntactic sugar --- a user interface --- for a simple use case,
which is designed for use by users who don't care to learn a richer,
more complex set of commands, or who want to use for simple, temporary
use cases.

So you can see the top-most stash by running the command:

   git log refs/stash

You can also see that these two commands produce essentially the same
output:

   git stash list
   git reflog refs/stash

By the way, reflogs by default expire after 90 days.  And if you do
something like this:

  git reflog expire --expire=now --all
  git stash list

*Poof* Watch all of your stashed patches disappear.  So if you are
storing things that you consider especially valuable using git stash,
I'd encourage you to rethink your strategy.

For anything that needs to be saved more than a few minutes, I tend to
create explicit branches, which can be named, so it's obvious is going
on.  Those branches aren't pushed out publically by default, any more
than the branch refs/stash is pushed out publically.  But because they
are branches, you can push them out explicitly, perhaps to a private
remote repo, if you like.

You can then use git cherry-pick, git rebase, git rebase -i, git
commit --amend, etc., to manage your work in progress.  This gives
much finer-grained control over how you manage your in-progress work,
at the cost of needing to learn a more complex set of commands.

Cheers,

					- Ted

P.S.  One hint: if the reason why you don't like using explicit branches is
because you get confused what branch you are on, it's helpful to put
your current branch on shell prompt.  I do something like this:

<tytso@cwcc> {/usr/projects/e2fsprogs/e2fsprogs}   (next)
1822% git checkout tt/pfsck
Switched to branch 'tt/pfsck'
<tytso@cwcc> {/usr/projects/e2fsprogs/e2fsprogs}   (tt/pfsck)
1823%

One of the conventions I use is that [initials]/* for branch names
that are generally never pushed out.  "tt" is my own initials, for my
own work.  Other people's initials are used for when they send me
branches to look at, that aren't quite ready to be merged into the
master, next, or maint branches.  Sometimes I will follow Junio's
convention of merging other people's in-progress work that they've
sent me into a pu (proposed updates) branch, for other people to test
and review, and for integration testing.  I tend not to do that often
since e2fsprogs' development tends not to be as complex/dynamic as
git's.


My shell prompt is accomplished through this in my .bashrc:

    if [ $UID = 0 ]; then
	u="${LOGNAME}.root"
	p="#"
    else
	u="$LOGNAME";
	p="%"
    fi
    if [ $SHLVL != 1 ]; then
	s=", level $SHLVL"
    fi
    h=${HOSTNAME}
    if [ -n "$debian_chroot" ]; then
	h=${debian_chroot}-CHROOT.${h}
    fi
    if test -f /etc/bash_completion ; then
	. /etc/bash_completion
    fi
    if test -f /usr/local/share/bash-completion/bash_completion.sh ; then
	. /usr/local/share/bash-completion/bash_completion.sh
    fi
    if test -f /usr/local/share/git-core/contrib/completion/git-prompt.sh ; then
	. /usr/local/share/git-core/contrib/completion/git-prompt.sh
    fi
    if type __git_ps1 >& /dev/null ; then
	PS1="<${u}@${h}> {\${PWD}}$s  \$(__git_ps1)\n\!$p "
    else
	PS1="<${u}@${h}> {\${PWD}}$s\n\!$p "
    fi
    unset u s h