people are always saying:

Illustration of two stick figures talking. One is bald and smiling, the second has long curly hair and is frowning.

person 1: don’t worry! it’s impossible to lose your work in git!

person 2 (thinking): my lost work says otherwise

but some parts of git are MUCH safer than others

commits on a branch / tag

(lock icon) never change

Illustration of a smiling stick figure with curly hair. Their speech bubble is surrounded by hearts and stars.

person: you can ALWAYS use the commit ID to get your work back!

orphan commits

(lock icon) never change, except…

they’ll eventually get deleted by git’s garbage collection

(usually not for a few months though)

branches and HEAD

(unlocked lock icon) change ALL THE TIME

(clock going backwards icon) BUT there’s a history of all the changes in the reflog

Tiny cute illustration of a smiling stick figure with curly hair.

person: the reflog is NOT easy to use but at least it’s there

staging area

(unlocked lock icon) changes ALL THE TIME

(crossed out clock going backwards icon) no history

(sad face) just gotta be careful

the stash

(crossed out clock going backwards icon) git stash pop deletes entries forever

… but you can technically get them back by using git fsck to search EVERY SINGLE COMMIT