Mehdi’s Notes

Losing in-progress work is one of the fastest ways to feel helpless in front of a computer. This article about recovering lost git stashes was initially published 5 years ago on Dev.to and has a steady 10000 views per year, so I guess it happens to a lot of persons.

Recover a lost Git stash in two steps ​

Sometimes you end up stashing code, then at some point those stashes get cleaned. And one day, you may be like:

Ooops, I think I just deleted stashes that I needed! Are they lost forever? 😨

Fortunately, I managed to recover them. Here’s the two-steps procedure that worked for me after going through various readings (and others), and also some general tips.

Step 1: list lost stashes ​

In your project where stashes are trashed:

sh
git fsck --unreachable | grep commit | cut -d ' ' -f3 | xargs git log --merges --no-walk

It returns a list of lost stashes, ordered by date.

sh
commit 7754fed19955d2958d952ab2836b22631b036b5
Merge: f0a125c 36f580 e508036
Author: Mehdi Merah <xx@xxx.com>
Date:   Fri Apr 27 16:41:17 2018 +0200

    On regions-components: After Regions component

commit 43c45c94caadcc87d783064624585c194f4be8
Merge: 13703fd bc8220e 4005629
Author: Mehdi Merah <xx@xxx.com>
Date:   Sat Apr 21 20:03:44 2018 +0200

    On master: Before Regions components

commit bb615e44ed99b5a5622ead0c4bbb7b4acc19767
Merge: c6a7b3 127203e 45dcc54
Author: Mehdi Merah <xx@xxx.com>
Date:   Sat Apr 7 19:39:50 2018 +0200

    On master: Wololo

# So, basically this anatomy:

commit {stash commit hash}
Merge: {parent commit hash…}
Author: {author name} <{author email}>
Date:   {stash date with timezone}

    On {branch name}: {stash commit message}
(END)
  • To quit the list of stashes, press the Q key.
  • To navigate in a long stashes list, use the up and down arrows.
  • For Windows user, maybe johnwait’s comment will help you during the battle:
johnwait’s comment

On Windows, in a good old command window (your usual cmd.exe), step 1. could be translated to:

for /f "tokens=3" %a in ('git fsck --unreachable ^| find "commit"') do @git log --merges --no-walk %a

If your Git speaks français, and you're one to choose the more complicated path, you could use something like:

for /f "tokens=1,2,3,4" %a in ('git fsck --unreachable ^| find "commit"') do @if "%c"=="inatteignable" (@git log --merges --no-walk %d) else (@git log --merges --no-walk %c)

or, really, keep it simple with alias git='LANG=en_GB git' instead.

Bonus

For PowerShell aficionados, here's a command that should work regardless of your Git's locale (well, as long as a commit is still referred to as commit):

(git fsck --unreachable | Select-String "commit") -split '\s+' | Select-String -pattern "^[0-9a-fA-F]{40}$" | ForEach-Object { git log --merges --no-walk $_ }

(Really useful post btw!)

Step 2: send a lost stash back where it comes from ​

Let’s use the commit hash of the second stash (from the previous list):

sh
git update-ref refs/stash 4b3fc45c94caadcc87d783064624585c194f4be8 -m "My recovered stash"

And that’s it! You’ll find your stash as usual, using git stash list or by having a look in your favorite Git client.

Gotchas ​

1. I still can’t see my recovered stash ​

Retry using the --create-reflog parameter (thanks studoggithub):

sh
git update-ref refs/stash 4b3fc45c94caadcc87d783064624585c194f4be8 --create-reflog -m "My recovered stash"

It did the trick for that person using git 2.22.0 on Ubuntu 18.04.

2. My Git client isn’t in English ​

If your Git isn’t in English, you’ll have to run alias git='LANG=en_GB git' each time you want to recover a set of stashes (thanks mathieuschopfer), otherwise the unreachable flag in git fsck --unreachable might be in another language, so you can either:

  • alias the language like Mathieu (put in in your .bashrc file so it becomes permanent);
  • adapt the first command: translate unreachable into your git language and update the cut command.

Advices ​

Commit messages are healthy ​

I always add a commit message to stash using git stash save -m "My commit message": without message, the only way to identify a stash are its timestamp and the branch it was saved from, which might not be enough compared to human-written words.

Commit messages also help Git clients:

  • GitUp, the Git client I use, completely fails at showing unnamed stashes. That’s probably why you can’t create a stash in GitUp without giving it a name, which is great!
  • The well-known SourceTree succeeds at showing unnamed stashes, but as you can guess, the list isn’t friendly to browse: Unnamed stashes in SourceTree

Prefer git stash apply over git stash pop ​

Unlike git stash pop, git stash apply does not remove the stash from the list of stashes, which can avoid accidental loss.

Prefer branches over stashes ​

Stashes serve a different purpose than branches. Wherever it makes sense to you, commit your code to a new branch instead of stashing it. You’re gonna start a new branch anyway if you use a branching model like Git Flow.