Stash and Cherry-pick

Part of the Git course

You are halfway through a change, files edited, nothing finished, when a teammate messages you: "can you look at a bug on main right now?" You cannot commit your half-done work, because a commit is supposed to leave the project in a state that makes sense on its own, and this does not.

Think about clearing your desk when a visitor drops by unannounced. You do not file every paper away properly, you do not finish what you were doing, you just sweep everything into a box, slide the box under the desk, and now the desk looks clean enough to work at something else. Nothing was thrown out. It is all still in the box, exactly as it was, waiting for you to pull it back out later.