Git stash: "Cannot apply to a dirty working tree, please stage your changes"

Question

When I have to apply stashed changes to a dirty working copy, e.g. pop more than one changeset from the stash, I use the following:

$ git stash show -p | git apply -3 && git stash drop

Basically it

1. creates a patch
2. pipes that to the apply command
3. if there are any conflicts they will need to be resolved via 3-way merge
4. if apply (or merge) succeeded it drops the just applied stash item...

I wonder why there is no -f (force) option for git stash pop which should exactly behave like the one-liner above.

In the meantime you might want to add this one-liner as a git alias:

$ git config --global --replace-all alias.unstash \
   '!git stash show -p | git apply -3 && git stash drop'
$ git unstash

---

Thanks to @SamHasler for pointing out the -3 parameter which allows to resolve conflicts directly via 3-way merge.

I do it in this way:

git add -A
git stash apply

and then (optionaly):

git reset

You can do this without having to stash your current changes by exporting the stash you want as a patch file and manually applying it.

For example, say you want to apply stash@{0} to a dirty tree:

1. Export stash@{0} as a patch:

   git stash show -p stash@{0} > Stash0.patch

2. Manually apply the changes:

   git apply Stash0.patch

If the second step fails, you will have to edit the Stash0.patch file to fix any errors and then try git apply again.

Either clean your working directory with git reset, commit the changes, or, if you want to stash the current changes, try:

$ git stash save "description of current changes"
$ git stash pop stash@{1}

This will stash the current changes, and then pop the second stash from the stash stack.