When working with Git, the stash feature is useful for saving changes that are not ready to be committed. Sometimes, while popping stashes, you might run into conflicts or simply change your mind. This article will walk you through how to abort a stash pop in Git.

What is Git Stash?

The Git stash command is a handy tool for temporarily preserving changes you’ve made to your working directory. It allows you to switch branches or work on something else without committing these changes. However, there are times when you want to abort the process of applying stashed changes. This article explains how to effectively abort a stash pop in Git.

Steps to Abort a Stash Pop

Step 1: Identify the Problem

Understand that once a stash pop has started, it might lead to conflicts or unintended changes. You can identify a stash pop problem by observing the conflicts or errors during the pop operation.

Step 2: Interrupt the Process

If you realize during the stash pop that you need to abort, you can interrupt the process using Ctrl+C in your terminal.

Step 3: Revert Changes

If you cannot interrupt the process or have already completed it, you can manually revert changes. Here’s how you can do it:

• Use git reset –hard to discard all changes made by the stash pop.
• If you have uncommitted changes that you want to keep, use git stash to save them before resetting.

Step 4: Clear Conflicts

If conflicts have already occurred, use the following steps:

• Resolve conflicts manually in the affected files.
• Use git reset to reset the index without changing any files.
• Use git checkout . to discard changes in the working directory.

Step 5: Verify the State

Ensure your working directory is in the desired state. You can use git status to check the current state of your directory.

Example

Let’s go through a practical example to illustrate these steps.

Step 1: Create and Stash Changes

git init example-repo
cd example-repo
echo "Initial content" > file.txt
git add file.txt
git commit -m "Initial commit"

# Make some changes and stash them
echo "Stashed changes" >> file.txt
git stash

Step 2: Apply and Abort Stash Pop

Attempt to pop the stash:

git stash pop

If conflicts occur or you decide to abort:

# Interrupt the process
Ctrl+C

Step 3: Revert Changes

Revert to the previous state:

git reset --hard

Step 4: Clear Conflicts (if any)

If there were conflicts:

# Resolve conflicts manually in files
git reset
git checkout .

Step 5: Verify the State

Check the state of your working directory:

git status

Your working directory should now be clean, and the stash pop should be effectively aborted.