How to recover the index after a git stash / git stash pop?

Question

After adding some changes to the index with git add -p, I then issued a git stash but forgot to add --keep-index. Then I stupidly did a git stash pop, and all my changes to the index were gone. Is there a way to recover the index to the state before the git stash?

Answer 1

When you've just done git stash pop, the last line in the output is:

Dropped refs/stash@{0} (ca82a6dff817ec66f44342007202690a93763949)

If you've lost it, see How to recover a dropped stash in Git? to find the commit hash.

Once you have the hash, either:

• Drop all current changes (applied stash):

  git reset --hard

  And reapply the stash using its id, this time with index:

  git stash apply ca82a6d --index
  

• Reset only the index, the point here is that the index is saved as a second parent of the stash:

  git reset ca82a6d^2 .

  Notice the dot at the end. If you don't specify it, it'll also move HEAD to the index (the index will appear as a commit). In this case run git reset --soft HEAD@{1} to return the HEAD to its previous position.

Answer 2

This will do the job:

git stash apply --index

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Edit: Considering the index is already lost, you should run a git fsck --unreachable and inspect the latest commits it gives. You must be able to see your lost index there. After that you can git cherry-pick it.