How to git-cherry-pick only changes to certain files

Question

If I want to merge into a Git branch the changes made only to some of the files changed in a particular commit which includes changes to multiple files  how can this be achieved   Suppose the Git commit called stuff has changes to files A  B  C  and D but I want to merge only stuff s changes to files A and B  It sounds like a job for git cherry-pick but cherry-pick only knows how to merge entire commits  not a subset of the files

User · Accepted Answer

I d do it with cherry-pick -n  --no-commit  which lets you inspect  and modify  the result before committing   git cherry-pick -n  lt commit gt     unstage modifications you don t want to keep  and remove the   modifications from the work tree as well    this does work recursively  git checkout HEAD  lt path gt     commit  the message will have been stored for you by cherry-pick git commit   If the vast majority of modifications are things you don t want  instead of checking out individual paths  the middle step   you could reset everything back  then add in what you want     unstage everything git reset HEAD    stage the modifications you do want git add  lt path gt     make the work tree match the index    do this from the top level of the repo  git checkout

User · Answer

Merge a branch into new one  squash  and remove the files not needed   git checkout master git checkout -b  lt branch gt  git merge --squash  lt source-branch-with-many-commits gt  git reset HEAD  lt not-needed-file-1 gt  git checkout --  lt not-needed-file-1 gt  git reset HEAD  lt not-needed-file-2 gt  git checkout --  lt not-needed-file-2 gt  git commit

User · Answer

The other methods didn t work for me since the commit had a lot of changes and conflicts to a lot of other files  What I came up with was simply  git show SHA -- file1 txt file2 txt   git apply -   It doesn t actually add the files or do a commit for you so you may need to follow it up with  git add file1 txt file2 txt git commit -c SHA   Or if you want to skip the add you can use the --cached argument to git apply  git show SHA -- file1 txt file2 txt   git apply --cached -   You can also do the same thing for entire directories  git show SHA -- dir1 dir2   git apply -

User · Answer

The situation   You are on your branch  let s say master and you have your commit on any other branch  You have to pick only one file from that particular commit   The approach   Step 1  Checkout on the required branch   git checkout master   Step 2  Make sure you have copied the required commit hash   git checkout commit hash path to file   Step 3  You now have the changes of the required file on your desired branch  You just need to add and commit them   git add path to file git commit -m  Your commit message

User · Answer

For the sake of completness  what works best for me is  git show YOURHASH --no-color -- file1 txt file2 txt dir3 dir4   git apply -3 --index -  It does exactly what OP wants  It does conflict resolution when needed  similarly how merge does it  It does add but not commit your new changes  see with status

User · Answer

Perhaps the advantage of this method over Jefromi s answer is that you don t have to remember which behaviour of git reset is the right one        Create a branch to throw away  on which we ll do the cherry-pick   git checkout -b to-discard     Do the cherry-pick   git cherry-pick stuff     Switch back to the branch you were previously on   git checkout -     Update the working tree and the index with the versions of A and B    from the to-discard branch   git checkout to-discard -- A B     Commit those changes   git commit -m  Cherry-picked changes to A and B from  stuff       Delete the temporary branch   git branch -D to-discard

User · Answer

Use git merge --squash branch name this will get all changes from the other branch and will prepare a commit for you   Now remove all unneeded changes and leave the one you want  And git will not know that there was a merge

User · Answer

You can use   git diff  lt commit gt    lt commit gt  --  lt path gt    git apply   The notation  lt commit gt   specifies the  first  parent of  lt commit gt   Hence  this diff command picks the changes made to  lt path gt  in the commit  lt commit gt    Note that this won t commit anything yet  as git cherry-pick does   So if you want that  you ll have to do   git add  lt path gt  git commit

User · Answer

I usually use the -p flag with a git checkout from the other branch which I find easier and more granular than most other methods I have come across   In principle   git checkout  lt other branch name gt   lt files to grab in list separated by spaces gt  -p   example   git checkout mybranch config important yml app models important rb -p   You then get a dialog asking you which changes you want in  blobs  this pretty much works out to every chunk of continuous code change which you can then signal y  Yes  n  No  etc for each chunk of code   The -p or patch option works for a variety of commands in git including git stash save -p which allows you to choose what you want to stash from your current work  I sometimes use this technique when I have done a lot of work and would like to separate it out and commit in more topic based commits using git add -p and choosing what I want for each commit

User · Answer

I would just cherry-pick everything  then do this   git reset --soft HEAD    Then I would revert the changes I don t want  then make a new commit

User · Answer

I found another way which prevents any conflicting merge on cherry-picking which IMO is kind of easy to remember and understand  Since you are actually not cherry-picking a commit  but part of it  you need to split it first and then create a commit which will suit your needs and cherry-pick it   First create a branch from the commit you want to split and checkout it     git checkout COMMIT-TO-SPLIT-SHA -b temp   Then revert previous commit     git reset HEAD 1   Then add the files changes you want to cherry-pick     git add FILE   and commit it     git commit -m  pick me    note the commit hash  let s call it PICK-SHA and go back to your main branch  master for example forcing the checkout     git checkout -f master   and cherry-pick the commit     git cherry-pick PICK-SHA   now you can delete the temp branch     git branch -d temp -f

User · Answer

Cherry pick is to pick changes from a specific  commit   The simplest solution is to pick all changes of certain files is to use    git checkout source branch  lt paths gt       In example     git branch   master   twitter integration   git checkout twitter integration app models avatar rb db migrate 20090223104419 create avatars rb test unit models avatar test rb test functional models avatar test rb   git status   On branch master   Changes to be committed       use  git reset HEAD  lt file gt      to unstage        new file    app models avatar rb     new file    db migrate 20090223104419 create avatars rb     new file    test functional models avatar test rb     new file    test unit models avatar test rb     git commit -m   Merge  avatar code from  twitter integration  branch   master   created 4d3e37b    Merge  avatar code from  twitter integration  branch  4 files changed  72 insertions     0 deletions -  create mode 100644 app models avatar rb create mode 100644 db migrate 20090223104419 create avatars rb create mode 100644 test functional models avatar test rb create mode 100644 test unit models avatar test rb   Sources and full explanation http   jasonrudolph com blog 2009 02 25 git-tip-how-to-merge-specific-files-from-another-branch   UPDATE   With this method  git will not MERGE the file  it will just override any other change done on the destination branch  You will need to merge the changes manually         git diff HEAD filename

[git] How to git-cherry-pick only changes to certain files?

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