Discard stashed hunk -- how to get it working?

[Corey Knight]

Does unstashing individual hunks actually work? This consistently fails on every git repo on my Mac.

Steps:

1. Checkout a repo.

2. Make some changes. (even just 1 tiny change)

3. Stash changes.

4. View the Stash.

5. Press "Discard Hunk" on any hunk.

Expected: discard the hunk.

Actual: the attached error message.

Question: Am I doing something wrong, or is this feature just broken out of the box?

[Seth · Accepted solution]

I don't think you can modify stashes in this way. SourceTree always displays the "Discard Hunk" and related buttons in the diff view, even though they aren't relevant here.

The reason for this is that all of those types of changes (discarding hunks or file changes) are performed on your working copy, but your stash is, by definition, not on your working copy.

To get what you want, you should apply the stash to a clean working copy, make the modifications you want, then create a new stash.

You may consider filing a bug at jira.atlassian.comrequesting that the developers remove/disable those buttons when viewing stashed diffs. If so, answer this question with a link so others can vote it up if they want to.