How do I pop git stash without triggering an auto-merge?

Question

The short version of this question is this: how can I pop the git stash without triggering an auto-merge?

---

Now for the longer version...

Consider the following toy example of an alternative to git stash ... + git pull ... + git pop.

First, git status shows that the only modification in the working directory is to some tracked file foo.

# On branch master
# Changes not staged for commit:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#   modified:   foo
#
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

Now, in order to reset the working directory to a clean state, as a pre-requisite for running git pull, I temporarily rename the modified file foo (to some untracked name), and restore the version of foo in HEAD...

% mv foo foo.$(date +%Y%m%dT%H%M%S)
% git checkout foo
% git status
# On branch master
# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#   foo.20130508T110014
nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

OK, now I run git pull, which, for the sake of this example, we may assume is a fast-forward:

% git pull

Lastly, I restore the temporarily renamed foo.

% mv foo.20130508T110014 foo

...and I'm back to

% git status
# On branch master
# Changes not staged for commit:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#   modified:   foo
#

This is the "moral equivalent" of a git stash save + git pull + git stash pop, EXCEPT that the former, and not the latter, is immune to "merge conflicts", like this one:

% git stash save 'WIP'
% git pull
% git stash pop
Auto-merging foo
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in foo

How can I replicate the rename-checkout-pull-rename sequence above using git stash save + ... + git stash pop, without triggering an auto-merge?

Incidentally, the rename-checkout-...-rename routine more closely represents what I expect from a command called stash. In other words: save the state of my working directory now, and replace it later. There's no "merge" in this picture.

Answer 1

I belatedly realized that git already provides an extremely simple solution to the problem that motivated this question (namely an automatic merge with the potential to put the repository in a "unmerged state").

All one needs to do is to use

git stash branch <branchname> [<stash>]

instead of git stash pop (or git stash apply). Where <branchname> is the name of a new branch created by git for the purpose of applying the stashed changes.

This pops the stash in a way that is guaranteed to be free of conflicts.

Answer 2

stash merges, that's just how it works.

You can achieve the non-merge-y stash with with write-tree read-tree and checkout-index. Here's a worked example for doing this to achieve a pristine test environment.

To just brute-force a no-merge stash apply, you could e.g.

git read-tree stash^{tree}
git checkout-index -af