Switching with uncommitted work

The stash Innesta makes for you, and the box that decides whether it comes back.

A branch switch wants a clean working copy, and half-finished work is the normal state of one. With Auto-stash on branch switch turned on in Settings, Innesta offers a way through rather than stopping: Switch Branch, with the button reading Stash & Switch.

The list is what is in the way; the box under it decides whether the stash comes back when you return to this branch.

Read what the sheet says, because it is less than the name suggests. Your tracked changes go into a stash called Innesta auto-stash before switching to <branch>, and then the branch changes. Untracked files stay where they are, and the sheet counts them, so a new file you had forgotten about does not quietly stay behind.

The setting starts on. With it off there is no sheet: Innesta refuses the switch while tracked changes are in the working copy, and says so.

Restore changes when switching back

Ticked, the stash is marked for the branch you are leaving. When Innesta checks that branch out again — in a minute or next week, in this window or another, because the mark is kept in the repository rather than in the app — your changes are put back and the stash is deleted.

In that order and only that order: the stash goes after the changes are back, never before, so a restore that does not happen costs you nothing.

Left alone, the box changes nothing about the switch you are making. The stash waits in Stashes until you restore it yourself, which is also how you put the work somewhere else.

The box starts unticked and comes back the way you left it, here and in every other Innesta window. The choice is recorded when you switch, not when you tick it: cancelling the sheet leaves the setting where it was.

One stash, one branch, one attempt

Only the stash this switch is about to make is marked, and only for the branch it is made on. Leave the same branch again with the box ticked and the newer stash takes the mark from the older one, which stays in the list to be restored by hand.

Restoring or deleting a marked stash yourself cancels its automatic restore. You have dealt with it; Innesta will not deal with it again.

When the restore does not work

Whatever happens, the branch has changed and the stash is still there. What varies is where your changes are:

  • It conflicted. The conflict is in the working copy, for the three-pane editor like any other — with its sides named Current branch and Local changes, because that is what the two of them are here.
  • It could not be restored. Innesta selects the stash in the sidebar for you, ready to read or restore by hand.
  • It was restored, but the stash could not be deleted. Your changes are back and the stash beside them is a copy of them, to delete when you have checked.

Innesta says which of the three happened, and none of them is retried on the next switch: the mark is spent on the first attempt. A restore that quietly tried again later would be a change to your working copy that nothing on screen had asked for.