Note: git-format-staged solves my original problem much better than git-ustash does.
Save and restore unstaged changes in Git.
git-ustash save saves all unstaged changes, and only unstaged changes.
It's an error to call git-ustash save while there are previously-saved unstaged changes (i.e. the "max stash size" is 1).
git-ustash restore restores the previously-saved unstaged changes.
Try using Nix: nix run github:LightAndLight/git-ustash -- --help
Add to a Nix Flake:
{
inputs = {
flake-utils.url = "github:numtide/flake-utils";
git-ustash.url = "github:LightAndLight/git-ustash";
};
outputs = { self, nixpkgs, flake-utils, git-ustash }:
flake-utils.lib.eachDefaultSystem (system:
let
pkgs = import nixpkgs { inherit system; };
in {
devShell = pkgs.mkShell {
buildInputs = with pkgs; [
git-ustash.packages.${system}.default
];
};
}
);
}This is something I've wanted when writing pre-commit hooks that do auto-formatting.
The goal of a pre-commit auto-formatter is to format staged files without affecting any other files.
git diff --cached --name-only gives the list of staged files, but if you just format them without any other preparation then you can cause issues with unstaged files.
For example, if you use git add -p to stage a file using a partial patch, then you will have the rest of the file unstaged.
How to format just the staged copy of the file?
The unstaged version (with the remainder of the changes) is the only one on disk.
Using git stash --keep-index almost does the right thing; it gets the unstaged files out of the way so it looks like you are free to work on jus the staged files.
Unfortunately it also stashes the staged files, so that when you auto-format the staged files, re-add them to the index, and pop from the stash, the formatted files are overwritten by the stash.
This answer on StackOverflow looked promising, but git stash push --staged fails with an error when I use it in the git add -p aforementioned situation.
git-ustash doesn't fully solve the pre-commit auto-formatter problem for me, but it has revealed the next step along the way.
git-ustash save; formatCode; git add -u; git-ustash restore restores unformatted unstaged files.
When some changes are split across staged and unstaged versions of a file (the git add -p workflow), formatting that's applied to the staged version is "lost" on the unstaged version.
This makes the diff after git-ustash restore rather noisy and adds busywork into the commit workflow.
I think the next step would be a program that can modify a staged file and backport the diff to the file's unstaged counterpart.