[niggler]

git stash has other cool features and use cases (for example, when you want to pull from upstream and you have conflicting changes.) http://git-scm.com/book/ch6-3.html is a nice summary and the manpage also gives some sample workflows.

[drstewart]

I actually saw this as a strike against git usability -- this should happen transparently imo, why should I have to git stash save; git pull --rebase; git stash pop for things to apply cleanly? Just do it automatically and fail if the stash application fails.

[andrewflnr]

Because then git would be doing magic stuff you don't (necessarily) understand, and people who like that aren't git's target audience. Those are all separate pieces of functionality that shouldn't be stuck together by default.

[jzwinck]

The same argument could be applied against git pull, which is really the concatenation of fetch and merge (or rebase). I agree with the previous poster that there should be better defaults available to non-tweakers.

[andrewflnr]

Git pull always seemed weird to me too. I don't use it.

[jahewson]

I'd call that "happening opaquely"

[Spiritus]

You could just create an alias for that.