Prevent 'git checkout' if uncommitted changes

Question

I frequently have a bad time because I checkout a branch with uncommitted changes that I should have committed before changing branches but forgot. Is there a way using some git config I can have the git checkout fail if there are any pending changes or new files? I've recently gotten into the habit of running git status before git checkout, but that's inconvenient and still prone to forgetfulness. I can probably use a Bash alias to chain those two commands together in some way, but I'm hoping there's either something I can throw in my .gitconfig or a flag that I'm not seeing in git config's man page.

Answer 1

git checkout will not run if the checkout would cause any changes to get lost during its process. So even if you use git checkout with a dirty working directory, all your changes are carried over to the other branch. And you can also just switch back to the previous branch to get in the old state.

If the branches are incompatible (for example a file you modified was deleted), git checkout should automatically fail, preventing you from losing any changes.