📂Day 11 - Advance Git & GitHub for DevOps Engineers: Part-II

🟡 Git Stash

In simple terms, git stash is like putting your changes aside temporarily. It allows you to save your work without committing it, so you can switch to another task or branch and then come back to your changes later. It's useful when you're not ready to commit your changes but need to work on something else or clean up your workspace.

Here's a simple example of how git stash works:

Let's say you're working on a feature branch in your Git repository and you've made some changes to your files but you're not ready to commit them yet because you need to switch to another branch to fix a bug:

1. Check the status of your changes:

     git status
   

2. Stage your changes (if necessary) using git add.

3. Now, to stash your changes, run:

     git stash
   

   This will stash your changes, leaving your working directory clean.

4. You can switch to another branch now using git checkout:

     git checkout other-branch
   

5. After working on the other branch, you might decide to come back to your previous changes. To retrieve your changes from the stash, you can use:

     git stash apply
   

   This will reapply your changes to the current branch.

6. If you want to remove the changes from the stash after applying them, you can run:

     git stash drop
   

   Or, if you want to apply and drop in a single command, you can use:

     git stash pop
   

This is a basic example of how git stash can be used to temporarily store changes in Git. It's particularly handy when you need to switch contexts or work on something else briefly without committing half-finished work.

🟡 Git Cherry-pick

Git cherry-pick is a command that allows you to select specific commits from one branch and apply them to another. This can be useful when you want to selectively apply changes that were made in one branch to another.

Example:

1. Create two new branches:

     git checkout -b branch1
     # Make some changes and commits on branch1
     git commit -am "Commit 1 on branch1"
     git commit -am "Commit 2 on branch1"
   

     git checkout -b branch2
     # Make some changes and commits on branch2
     git commit -am "Commit 1 on branch2"
     git commit -am "Commit 2 on branch2"
   

2. Now, suppose you want to apply "Commit 2 on branch1" to branch2:

   First, find the commit hash of "Commit 2 on branch1":

     git log
   

   Identify the hash of "Commit 2 on branch1".

3. Switch to branch2:

     git checkout branch2
   

4. Cherry-pick the commit from branch1:

     git cherry-pick <commit_hash>
   

   Replace <commit_hash> with the actual hash of "Commit 2 on branch1".

5. Resolve conflicts if any. Git might pause the cherry-pick process if there are conflicts to resolve. You'll need to manually resolve these conflicts, stage the changes, and continue the cherry-pick with git cherry-pick --continue.

6. Once conflicts are resolved (if any), the commit from branch1 has been cherry-picked onto branch2.

   🟡 Conclusion

   In summary, git stash is for temporarily shelving changes, while git cherry-pick is for selectively applying specific commits to another branch. Both commands are valuable tools in managing your Git workflow efficiently.

   Happy learning :)