Git stash: “Cannot apply to a dirty working tree, please stage your changes”

Question

I am trying to apply changes I stashed earlier with git stash pop and get the message:

Cannot apply to a dirty working tree, please stage your c         


        

Answer 1

I do it in this way:

git add -A
git stash apply

and then (optionaly):

git reset

Answer 2

You can do this without having to stash your current changes by exporting the stash you want as a patch file and manually applying it.

For example, say you want to apply stash@{0} to a dirty tree:

1. Export stash@{0} as a patch:

   git stash show -p stash@{0} > Stash0.patch

2. Manually apply the changes:

   git apply Stash0.patch

If the second step fails, you will have to edit the Stash0.patch file to fix any errors and then try git apply again.

Answer 3

I was unable to get most of these to work; for some reason it always thinks I have local changes to a file. I can't apply a stash, patches won't apply, checkout and reset --hard fail. What finally worked was saving the stash as a branch with git stash branch tempbranchname, and then doing a normal branch merge: git checkout master and git merge tempbranchname. From http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Tools-Stashing :

If you want an easier way to test the stashed changes again, you can run git stash branch, which creates a new branch for you, checks out the commit you were on when you stashed your work, reapplies your work there, and then drops the stash if it applies successfully

Answer 4

None of these answers actually work if you find yourself in this situation as I did today. Regardless of how many git reset --hard's I did, it got me nowhere. My answer (not official by any means was):

1. Figure out the stash's hash use git reflog --all
2. Merge that hash with the branch you're interested in

Answer 5

You have files that have been modified but not committed. Either:

git reset --hard HEAD (to bring everything back to HEAD)

or, if you want to save your changes:

git checkout -b new_branch
git add ...
git commit
git checkout -b old_branch
git stash pop