Leaving any files uncommitted before a complex operation in git is a really bad idea (make a temporary commit if necessary). It's almost impossible to completely lose committed data, but pretty easy to destroy uncommitted data.
This. I also do a `git diff > save.patch` if there is something uncommmited that i don't want to commit at the moment. A patch file feels more comfortable to me than git stash, as i can easily view the patch files, and reapply them with `patch -p1 < save.patch`
