OH, that's very nice, I want that. Guess I need to upgrade my git. Okay, that invalidates my entire previous post. Sorry! ;)

So, if you made changes on X but wanted them on Y...

The thing about the "git checkout Y" is that there's no harm in trying, and it'll work most of the time. If it does work, you only have to commit, and you're done in less time than it takes to stash & pop.

If you're just not the gambling type, here's one way to avoid branch ping-pong. I'm sure there are others.

  $ git checkout -b Z
  $ git commit -a "config changes"
  $ git checkout Y
  $ git cherry-pick Z
  $ git branch -D Z

I've personally witnessed too many stash accidents. BUT, if you are comfortable with using fsck if anything goes wrong, you really have no reason to consider my opinion at all.

I'm painting a picture that is more anti-stash than I actually am. My main safety concern with stash is how it's implemented, not how easy it is. The git authors could have used something like the above commands under the hood to implement stash, but they chose to circumvent the reflog for reasons I don't know, and that choice leads to frequent accidents. Git is supposed to be your safety net, not something that gets you into trouble.

That said, a lot of people seem to think stash is many times easier than the alternative, and I think if you really look at the alternatives fairly, using commits is most of the time not more difficult than stash, and occasionally one or two extra commands. It's just not that hard to avoid stash, and there are significant benefits.