How to emulate 'git stash' in fossil, bzr?

Question

Is it possible to emulate the behavior of 'git stash' when using fossil/bzr?

Basically I'm interested in handling the following workflow:

• at some point the source code tree has state X, it is commited
• I proceed to writing new code, I write it for a while and I see the opportunity of a refactoring
• I can't commit at this point, because the change I've started to make is not completed, it is not atomic yet
• at this point I would do 'git stash', would save the current work and would get back to state X
• I would do the refactoring and commit, source code now has state Y
• I would merge source code in state Y with code in stash, complete the change to make it atomic, then commit once again, pushing the source code to state Z

I think that generally it is possible to emulate this scenario when using another SCM by branching the code in state X instead of doing 'git stash', doing the refactoring in that branch, then merging the branch back into the main one. But I'm aware that branching is not always a cheap operation. So are there any better particular approaches that eventually rely on specific features of fossil/bzr?

Answer 1

Use bzr shelve and bzr unshelve commands.

Answer 2

You can use the patch command of your system.

• First you make a "stash" by storing a generated diff as .patch file:

  $scmtool diff > working.patch

• then reset your working directory.

• later, apply the patch with:

  patch -p1 --dry-run < working.patch

• and then this works, remove the --dry-run to apply the patch for real.