How do I merge changes to a single file rather than merging commits

Question

I have two branches  A and B  and I want to merge a single file from branch A with a corresponding single file from Branch B

User · Answer

This uses git s internal difftool  Maybe a little work to do but straight forward   First checkout the branch you want to merge into git checkout  lt branch to merge into gt        Then checkout the file from the branch you want to merge from git checkout  lt branch to merge from gt  --  lt file gt         Then you have to unstage that file to be able to use difftool git reset HEAD  lt file gt     Now use difftool to chose which lines to keep  Click on the mergebutton in difftool git difftool   Save the file in difftool and you should be done

User · Answer

I will do it as  git format-patch branch old  branch new file  this will produce a patch for the file   Apply patch at target branch old  git am blahblah patch

User · Answer

I found this approach simple and useful  How to  quot merge quot  specific files from another branch  As it turns out  we   re trying too hard  Our good friend git checkout is the right tool for the job  git checkout source branch  lt paths gt     We can simply give git checkout the name of the feature branch A and the paths to the specific files that we want to add to our master branch   Please read the whole article for more understanding

User · Answer

Assuming B is the current branch     git diff A  lt file-path gt   gt  patch tmp   git apply patch tmp -R   Note that this only applies changes to the local file  You ll need to commit afterwards

User · Answer

My edit got rejected  so I m attaching how to handle merging changes from a remote branch here   If you have to do this after an incorrect merge  you can do something like this     If you did a git pull and it broke something  do this first   Find the one before the merge  copy the SHA1 git reflog git reset --hard  lt sha1 gt     Get remote updates but DONT auto merge it git fetch github     Checkout to your mainline so your branch is correct  git checkout develop     Make a new branch where you ll be applying matches git checkout -b manual-merge-github-develop    Apply your patches git checkout --patch github develop path to file        Merge changes back in git checkout develop git merge manual-merge-github-develop   optionally add --no-ff    You ll probably have to git push -f   make sure you know what you re doing

User · Answer

The following command will  1  compare the file  of the correct branch  to master  2  interactively ask you which modifications to apply   git checkout --patch master

User · Answer

You can checkout the old version of the file to merge  saving it under a different name  then run whatever your merge tool is on the two files   eg   git show B src common store ts  gt   tmp store ts  where B is the branch name commit tag   meld src common store ts  tmp store ts

User · Answer

Here s what I do in these situations  It s a kludge but it works just fine for me     Create another branch based off of your working branch  git pull git merge the revision  SHA1  which contains the file you want to copy  So this will merge all of your changes  but we are only using this branch to grab the one file  Fix up any Conflicts etc  investigate your file   checkout your working branch Checkout the file commited from your merge  Commit it    I tried patching and my situation was too ugly for it  So in short it would look like this   Working Branch  A  Experimental Branch  B  contains file txt which has changes I want to fold in    git checkout A   Create new branch based on A   git checkout -b tempAB   Merge B into tempAB  git merge B   Copy the sha1 hash of the merge   git log  commit 8dad944210dfb901695975886737dc35614fa94e Merge  ea3aec1 0f76e61 Author  matthewe  lt matthewe matthewe com gt  Date    Wed Oct 3 15 13 24 2012 -0700  Merge branch  B  into tempAB   Checkout your working branch   git checkout A   Checkout your fixed-up file   git checkout 7e65b5a52e5f8b1979d75dffbbe4f7ee7dad5017 file txt   And there you should have it  Commit your result

User · Answer

You could use       git merge-file   Tip  https   www kernel org pub software scm git docs git-merge-file html

User · Answer

I came across the same problem  To be precise  I have two branches A and B with the same files but a different programming interface in some files  Now the methods of file f  which is independent of the interface differences in the two branches  were changed in branch B  but the change is important for both branches  Thus  I need to merge just file f of branch B into file f of branch A   A simple command already solved the problem for me if I assume that all changes are committed in both branches A and B   git checkout A  git checkout --patch B f   The first command switches into branch A  into where I want to merge B s version of the file f  The second command patches the file f with f of HEAD of B  You may even accept discard single parts of the patch  Instead of B you can specify any commit here  it does not have to be HEAD   Community edit  If the file f on B does not exist on A yet  then omit the --patch option  Otherwise  you ll get a  No Change   message

User · Answer

git checkout  lt target branch gt  git checkout  lt source branch gt   lt file path gt

[git] How do I merge changes to a single file, rather than merging commits?

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