Practical uses of git reset --soft?

Question

I have been working with git for just over a month. Indeed I have used reset for the first time only yesterday, but the soft reset still doesn\'t make much sense to me.

Answer 1

One possible usage would be when you want to continue your work on a different machine. It would work like this:

1. Checkout a new branch with a stash-like name,

   git checkout -b _stash
   

2. Push your stash branch up,

   git push -u origin _stash
   

3. Switch to your other machine.

4. Pull down both your stash and existing branches,

   git checkout _stash; git checkout 
   

5. You should be on your existing branch now. Merge in the changes from the stash branch,

   git merge _stash
   

6. Soft reset your existing branch to 1 before your merge,

   git reset --soft HEAD^
   

7. Remove your stash branch,

   git branch -d _stash
   

8. Also remove your stash branch from origin,

   git push origin :_stash
   

9. Continue working with your changes as if you had stashed them normally.

I think, in the future, GitHub and co. should offer this "remote stash" functionality in fewer steps.