git - Why do I have to stash / commit my changes before switching branches?

Question

I find this to be annoying because I would like to quickly switch branches and do something and then switch back to what I was working on before. I realize I can stash and then retrieve stash, but then I have to type those lines every time :/

Is there any way to avoid having to do this?

I also find it annoying because I keep about 5 or 10 feature branches and it gets hard to manage which ones have a stash that needs to be retrieved and which ones are good to keep working on as they are.

Answer 1

One way to make this easier is to use something like Legit. One of the commands I like from Legit is git switch:

$ git switch <branch>
# Switches to branch. Stashes and restores unstaged changes.

Legit stores the stash with a description that follows a particular naming convention. That way, when you use git switch to return to the first branch, it can automatically unstash the changes saved for that branch.