Once I discovered how git apply can take diff files (or patch files) as input, I stopped using git stash in favor of plain old files. Easier to list and browse the contents of prior edits, also you can grep the files as method of search. I’ve even found myself copying and editing the diffs before applying.
OskarS · 2h ago
That is a very neat trick, I agree.
I personally approaches stashes as undoable "clean up", and I never have anything really important that I want to save there. If I do have something like that, I just commit with a "WIP <some-descriptive-string>" message and don't push it, then a "git reset --mixed HEAD^" when I want to get back to it.
However, just FYI: you can "grep" your stashes really easily if you want to. just "git stash list -p" gives you the diffs for all the stashes, by default in "less" where you can search them, but you can pipe it to grep if you want. I somewhat frequently do that with "git log", if I want to know "when did this variable change?" or whatever, just "git log -p" to get the log with diffs in less, then search for whatever it was with a slash.
barbazoo · 6h ago
Oh that’s clever, I’ll try that out. Looks like you could just do a git diff > file.patch.
Neat.
johnrob · 6h ago
You’ll also want to familiarize with “git apply -3 <file name>”, for when a diff can’t be applied cleanly. It will try “harder” to merge (three way method) and if it still fails it invokes the conflict merge “UX”:
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smcameron · 20m ago
There's also Neil Brown's "wiggle" program for applying patches that don't apply.
although on debian based systems I think you can just "apt install wiggle"
johannes1234321 · 3h ago
git diff an pipe works, but committing and then `git format-patch` can export multiple patches and then includes metadata (commit message, date, author, etc.) which can make reasoning about such files a lot easier. In a plain diff you only got filename as metadata.
d3ckard · 6h ago
Thank you, will try. Useful bit of knowledge.
RaoulP · 6h ago
That’s a great idea, and very timely for me.
smcameron · 18m ago
If you work with git and patches a lot, stgit is worth a look.
It looks like Apple Mail has plugin support, I wonder if you could author a plugin that’d provide a button to apply the diff.
palata · 2h ago
I like doing it with aerc [1]. It's even possible to use aerc in parallel to another email client. Just open aerc for git-related emails, and that's it!
Exchange historically had a tendency to mangle emails sent through it (whitespace changes, line wrap, etc), which is obviously bad news for patchmails. I dunno if it's any better these days.
dmarinus · 4h ago
davmail supports smtp through outlook(365)
ndegruchy · 37m ago
Yeah, I used DAVMail with Emacs+MSMTP+MPOP+notmuch for ages. Works really well, the only occasional thing I had to do was reauthenticate the token, which pops up in a browser window.
I personally approaches stashes as undoable "clean up", and I never have anything really important that I want to save there. If I do have something like that, I just commit with a "WIP <some-descriptive-string>" message and don't push it, then a "git reset --mixed HEAD^" when I want to get back to it.
However, just FYI: you can "grep" your stashes really easily if you want to. just "git stash list -p" gives you the diffs for all the stashes, by default in "less" where you can search them, but you can pipe it to grep if you want. I somewhat frequently do that with "git log", if I want to know "when did this variable change?" or whatever, just "git log -p" to get the log with diffs in less, then search for whatever it was with a slash.
Neat.
<<<<<<<<<
=========
>>>>>>>>>
https://github.com/neilbrown/wiggle
although on debian based systems I think you can just "apt install wiggle"
https://stacked-git.github.io
[1]: https://drewdevault.com/2022/07/25/Code-review-with-aerc.htm...
Then you don't need that message to be in a file-based inbox that is accessible from your git repo.
And in that case you are still likely going to have to copy and paste something to get the correct path.
Exchange historically had a tendency to mangle emails sent through it (whitespace changes, line wrap, etc), which is obviously bad news for patchmails. I dunno if it's any better these days.