Switch to another branch without changing the workspace files

Question

I cloned a git repository from GitHub  made some changes and some commits  I made quite a lot and all are quite dirty  so they re not suitable for a pull request  Now I created the branch cleanchanges from origin master  so it s clean  and I want to commit my changes there as one commit with a nice commit comment   When I am on the local master  I want to switch to my cleanchanges but without changing the files  And then I m able to commit   How can I switch branches without changing files   I want to make it clear  I have all the changes committed in the local master  There are no uncommitted changes

User · Answer

Another way  if you want to create a new commit instead of performing a merge   git checkout cleanchanges git reset --hard master git reset cleanchanges  git status git add   git commit   The first  hard  reset will set your working tree to the same as the last commit in master   The second reset will put your HEAD back where it was  pointing to the tip of the cleanchanges branch  but without changing any files   So now you can add and commit them     Afterwards  if you want to remove the dirty commits you made from master  and assuming you have not already pushed them   you could   git checkout master git reset --hard origin master   This will discard all your new commits  returning your local master branch to the same commit as the one in the repository

User · Answer

Simplest way to do is as follows   git fetch  amp  amp  git checkout  lt branch name gt

User · Answer

Why not just git reset --soft  lt branch name gt    Demonstration   mkdir myrepo  cd myrepo  git init touch poem  git add poem  git commit -m  add poem     first commit git branch original echo bananas  gt  poem  git commit -am  change poem     second commit echo are tasty  gt  gt  poem    unstaged change git reset --soft original   Result     git diff --cached diff --git a poem b poem index e69de29  9baf85e 100644 --- a poem     b poem    -0 0  1     bananas   git diff diff --git a poem b poem index 9baf85e  ac01489 100644 --- a poem     b poem    -1  1 2     bananas  are tasty   One thing to note though  is that the current branch changes to original  You   re still left in the previous branch after the process  but can easily git checkout original  because it   s the same state  If you do not want to lose the previous HEAD  you should note the commit reference and do git branch -f  lt previous branch gt   lt commit gt  after that

User · Answer

It sounds like you made changes  committing them to master along the way  and now you want to combine them into a single commit   If so  you want to rebase your commits  squashing them into a single commit     I m not entirely sure of what exactly you want  so I m not going to tempt you with a script   But I suggest you read up on git rebase and the options for  squash ing  and try a few things out

User · Answer

Git  Switch to another branch  git checkout branch name

User · Answer

git fetch  amp  amp  git checkout branch name   branch name  here is the name of the branch    Then you will see message  Switched to a new branch  branch name  Branch  branch name  set up to track remote branch  branch name  from  origin

User · Answer

Edit  I just noticed that you said you had already created some commits  In that case  use git merge --squash to make a single commit   git checkout cleanchanges git merge --squash master git commit -m  nice commit comment for all my changes       Edit  The following answer applies if you have uncommitted changes    Just switch branches with git checkout cleanchanges  If the branches refer to the same ref  then all your uncommitted changes will be preserved in your working directory when you switch   The only time you would have a conflict is if some file in the repository is different between origin master and cleanchanges  If you just created the branch  then no problem   As always  if you re at all concerned about losing work  make a backup copy first  Git is designed to not throw away work without asking you first

User · Answer

The best bet is to stash the changes and switch branch  For switching branches  you need a clean state  So stash them  checkout a new branch and apply the changes on the new branch and commit it

[git] Switch to another branch without changing the workspace files

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