"Normally, I would have to save the changes (diff) into some file, switch to the main branch abandoning any changes, apply the fix or improvement and commit it. Then I could switch back to my own branch, apply the changes (patch) from the file and continue the work."
Really? Why would you "normally" jump through all these hoops just to work in the same directory? Using svn, my response to this is to jump back to the root of all my projects (~/codebase/ at my current work), checkout a clean version of the branch I need to work on, make changes / test / commit, and rm -rf the whole branch, changing directory back to where I was. If I get blocked on that change for a few hours, I don't have to jump through additional hoops to go back to working on the thing that was interrupted, since I can just change directory back to it.
Is there a reason why this is an awful workflow in git?
Really? Why would you "normally" jump through all these hoops just to work in the same directory? Using svn, my response to this is to jump back to the root of all my projects (~/codebase/ at my current work), checkout a clean version of the branch I need to work on, make changes / test / commit, and rm -rf the whole branch, changing directory back to where I was. If I get blocked on that change for a few hours, I don't have to jump through additional hoops to go back to working on the thing that was interrupted, since I can just change directory back to it.
Is there a reason why this is an awful workflow in git?