How can I selectively merge or pick changes from another branch in Git

Question

I m using Git on a new project that has two parallel -- but currently experimental -- development branches   master  import of existing codebase plus a few modifications that I m generally sure of exp1  experimental branch  1 exp2  experimental branch  2  exp1 and exp2 represent two very different architectural approaches  Until I get further along I have no way of knowing which one  if either  will work  As I make progress in one branch I sometimes have edits that would be useful in the other branch and would like to merge just those  What is the best way to merge selective changes from one development branch to another while leaving behind everything else  Approaches I ve considered   git merge --no-commit followed by manual unstaging of a large number of edits that I don t want to make common between the branches   Manual copying of common files into a temporary directory followed by git checkout to move to the other branch and then more manual copying out of the temporary directory into the working tree   A variation on the above  Abandon the exp branches for now and use two additional local repositories for experimentation   This makes the manual copying of files much more straightforward    All three of these approaches seem tedious and error-prone   I m hoping there is a better approach  something akin to a filter path parameter that would make git-merge more selective

User · Answer

When only a few files have changed between the current commits of the two branches, I manually merge the changes by going through the different files.

git difftool <branch-1>..<branch-2>

see also https://sites.google.com/site/icusite/setup/git-difftool

User · Answer

This is my workflow for merging selective files    Make a new branch  this will be temporary  git checkout -b newbranch    Grab the changes git merge --no-commit  featurebranch    Unstage those changes git reset HEAD  You can now see the files from the merge are unstaged     Now you can chose which files are to be merged  git add -p    Remember to  quot git add quot  any new files you wish to keep git commit

User · Answer

If you only need to merge a particular directory and leave everything else intact and yet preserve history  you could possibly try this    create a new target-branch off of the master before you experiment   The steps below assume you have two branches target-branch and source-branch  and the directory dir-to-merge that you want to merge is in the source-branch  Also assume you have other directories like dir-to-retain in the target that you don t want to change and retain history  Also  assumes there are merge conflicts in the dir-to-merge   git checkout target-branch git merge --no-ff --no-commit -X theirs source-branch   the option  -X theirs   will pick theirs when there is a conflict     the options  --no--ff --no-commit  prevent a commit after a merge  and give you an opportunity to fix other directories you want to retain  before you commit this merge     the above  would have messed up the other directories that you want to retain    so you need to reset them for every directory that you want to retain  git reset HEAD dir-to-retain   verify everything and commit

User · Answer

It s strange that git still does not have such a convenient tool  quot out of the box quot   I use it heavily when update some old version branch  which still has a lot of software users  by just some bugfixes from the current version branch  In this case it is often needed to quickly get just some lines of code from the file in trunk  ignoring a lot of other changes  that are not supposed to go into the old version     And of course interactive three-way merge is needed in this case  git checkout --patch  lt branch gt   lt file path gt  is not usable for this selective merge purpose  You can do it easily  Just add this line to  alias  section in your global  gitconfig or local  git config file   alias      mergetool-file    quot  sh -c  git show  1  2  gt   2 theirs  git show   git merge-base  1   git rev-parse HEAD    2  gt   2 base   C BCompare3 BCompare exe  2 theirs  2  2 base  2  rm -f  2 theirs  rm -f  2 base   - quot   It implies you use Beyond Compare  Just change to software of your choice if needed  Or you can change it to three-way auto-merge if you don t need the interactive selective merging   alias      mergetool-file    quot  sh -c  git show  1  2  gt   2 theirs  git show   git merge-base  1   git rev-parse HEAD    2  gt   2 base  git merge-file  2  2 base  2 theirs  rm -f  2 theirs  rm -f  2 base   - quot   Then use like this  git mergetool-file  lt source branch gt   lt file path gt   This will give you the true selective tree-way merge opportunity of just any file in other branch

User · Answer

For me  git reset --soft branch is the easiest way to selectively pick the changes from another branch  since  this command puts in my working tree  all the diff changes  and I can easily pick or revert which one I need    In this way  I have full control over the committed files

User · Answer

If you only need to merge a particular directory and leave everything else intact and yet preserve history  you could possibly try this    create a new target-branch off of the master before you experiment   The steps below assume you have two branches target-branch and source-branch  and the directory dir-to-merge that you want to merge is in the source-branch  Also assume you have other directories like dir-to-retain in the target that you don t want to change and retain history  Also  assumes there are merge conflicts in the dir-to-merge   git checkout target-branch git merge --no-ff --no-commit -X theirs source-branch   the option  -X theirs   will pick theirs when there is a conflict     the options  --no--ff --no-commit  prevent a commit after a merge  and give you an opportunity to fix other directories you want to retain  before you commit this merge     the above  would have messed up the other directories that you want to retain    so you need to reset them for every directory that you want to retain  git reset HEAD dir-to-retain   verify everything and commit

User · Answer

You can use read-tree to read or merge a given remote tree into the current index  for example  git remote add foo git example com foo git git fetch foo git read-tree --prefix my-folder  -u foo master trunk their-folder  To perform the merge  use -m instead  See also  How do I merge a sub directory in Git

User · Answer

Here is how you can replace Myclass java file in master branch with Myclass java in feature1 branch  It will work even if Myclass java doesn t exist on master   git checkout master git checkout feature1 Myclass java   Note this will overwrite - not merge - and ignore local changes in the master branch rather

User · Answer

I like the previous  git-interactive-merge  answer  but there s one easier  Let Git do this for you using a rebase combination of interactive and onto        A---C1---o---C2---o---o feature        ----o---o---o---o master  So the case is you want C1 and C2 from the  feature  branch  branch point  A    but none of the rest for now    git branch temp feature   git checkout master   git rebase -i --onto HEAD A temp  Which  as in the previous answer  drops you in to the interactive editor where you select the  pick  lines for C1 and C2  as above   Save and quit  and then it will proceed with the rebase and give you branch  temp  and also HEAD at master   C1   C2        A---C1---o---C2---o---o feature        ----o---o---o---o-master--C1---C2  HEAD  temp   Then you can just update master to HEAD and delete the temp branch and you re good to go    git branch -f master HEAD   git branch -d temp

User · Answer

I like the previous  git-interactive-merge  answer  but there s one easier  Let Git do this for you using a rebase combination of interactive and onto        A---C1---o---C2---o---o feature        ----o---o---o---o master  So the case is you want C1 and C2 from the  feature  branch  branch point  A    but none of the rest for now    git branch temp feature   git checkout master   git rebase -i --onto HEAD A temp  Which  as in the previous answer  drops you in to the interactive editor where you select the  pick  lines for C1 and C2  as above   Save and quit  and then it will proceed with the rebase and give you branch  temp  and also HEAD at master   C1   C2        A---C1---o---C2---o---o feature        ----o---o---o---o-master--C1---C2  HEAD  temp   Then you can just update master to HEAD and delete the temp branch and you re good to go    git branch -f master HEAD   git branch -d temp

User · Answer

I wrote my own script called  pmerge  to partially merge directories  It s a work in progress and I m still learning both Git and Bash scripting  This command uses git merge --no-commit and then unapplies changes that don t match the path provided  Usage  git pmerge branch path  Example  git merge develop src  I haven t tested it extensively  The working directory should be free of any uncommitted changes and untracked files     bin bash  E BADARGS 65  if      -ne 2   then     echo  quot Usage   basename  0  branch path quot      exit  E BADARGS fi  git merge  1 --no-commit IFS    n     List of changes due to merge   replace nulls with newlines   strip lines to just filenames   ensure lines are unique for f in   git status --porcelain -z -uno   tr   000    n    sed -e  s     graph      space     1         uniq   do         f     2      amp  amp  continue     if git reset  f  gt  dev null 2 gt  amp 1  then           Reset failed    file was previously unversioned         echo Deleting  f         rm  f     else         echo Reverting  f         git checkout --  f  gt  dev null 2 gt  amp 1     fi done unset IFS

User · Answer

I had the exact same problem as mentioned by you above   But I found this Git blog clearer in explaining the answer  Command from the above link    You are in the branch you want to merge to git checkout  lt branch you want to merge from gt   lt file paths    gt

User · Answer

You can use read-tree to read or merge a given remote tree into the current index  for example  git remote add foo git example com foo git git fetch foo git read-tree --prefix my-folder  -u foo master trunk their-folder  To perform the merge  use -m instead  See also  How do I merge a sub directory in Git

User · Answer

The simple way  to actually merge specific files from two branches  not just replace specific files with ones from another branch  Step one  Diff the branches git diff branch b  gt  my patch file patch Creates a patch file of the difference between the current branch and branch b Step two  Apply the patch on files matching a pattern git apply -p1 --include pattern matching the path to file or folder my patch file patch Useful notes on the options You can use   as a wildcard in the include pattern  Slashes don t need to be escaped  Also  you could use --exclude instead and apply it to everything except the files matching the pattern  or reverse the patch with -R The -p1 option is a holdover from the  Unix patch command and the fact that the patch file s contents prepend each file name with a  or b   or more depending on how the patch file was generated  which you need to strip  so that it can figure out the real file to the path to the file the patch needs to be applied to  Check out the man page for git-apply for more options  Step three  there is no step three Obviously you d want to commit your changes  but who s to say you don t have some other related tweaks you want to do before making your commit

User · Answer

A simple approach for selective merging committing by file  git checkout dstBranch git merge srcBranch     Make changes  including resolving conflicts to single files git add singleFile1 singleFile2 git commit -m  quot message specific to a few files quot  git reset --hard   Blow away uncommitted changes

User · Answer

There is another way to go  git checkout -p  It is a mix between git checkout and git add -p and might quite be exactly what you are looking for     -p  --patch        Interactively select hunks in the difference between the  lt tree-ish gt          or the index  if unspecified  and the working tree  The chosen        hunks are then applied in reverse to the working tree  and if a         lt tree-ish gt  was specified  the index           This means that you can use git checkout -p to selectively discard        edits from your current working tree  See the    Interactive Mode           section of git-add 1  to learn how to operate the --patch mode

User · Answer

A simple approach for selective merging committing by file  git checkout dstBranch git merge srcBranch     Make changes  including resolving conflicts to single files git add singleFile1 singleFile2 git commit -m  quot message specific to a few files quot  git reset --hard   Blow away uncommitted changes

User · Answer

I don t like the above approaches   Using cherry-pick is great for picking a single change  but it is a pain if you want to bring in all the changes except for some bad ones   Here is my approach   There is no --interactive argument you can pass to git merge   Here is the alternative   You have some changes in branch  feature  and you want to bring some but not all of them over to  master  in a not sloppy way  i e  you don t want to cherry pick and commit each one   git checkout feature git checkout -b temp git rebase -i master    Above will drop you in an editor and pick the changes you want ala  pick 7266df7 First change pick 1b3f7df Another change pick 5bbf56f Last change    Rebase b44c147  5bbf56f onto b44c147     Commands    pick   use commit   edit   use commit  but stop for amending   squash   use commit  but meld into previous commit     If you remove a line here THAT COMMIT WILL BE LOST    However  if you remove everything  the rebase will be aborted     git checkout master git pull   temp git branch -d temp   So just wrap that in a shell script  change master into  to and change feature into  from and you are good to go      bin bash   git-interactive-merge from  1 to  2 git checkout  from git checkout -b   from  tmp git rebase -i  to   Above will drop you in an editor and pick the changes you want git checkout  to git pull     from  tmp git branch -d   from  tmp

User · Answer

I had the exact same problem as mentioned by you above   But I found this clearer in explaining the answer  Summary   Check out the path s  from the branch you want to merge     git checkout source branch --  lt paths gt      Hint  It also works without  --  like seen in the linked post    or to selectively merge hunks    git checkout -p source branch --  lt paths gt        Alternatively  use reset and then add with the option -p        git reset  lt paths gt           git add -p  lt paths gt       Finally commit    git commit -m  quot  Merge  these changes quot

User · Answer

The easiest way is to set your repository to the branch you want to merge with  and then run git checkout  branch with file   path to file you would like to merge   If you run git status  you will see the file already staged    Then run git commit -m  quot Merge changes on   branch   to  file  quot   Simple

User · Answer

You use the cherry-pick command to get individual commits from one branch   If the change s  you want are not in individual commits  then use the method shown here to split the commit into individual commits  Roughly speaking  you use git rebase -i to get the original commit to edit  then git reset HEAD  to selectively revert changes  then git commit to commit that bit as a new commit in the history   There is another nice method here in Red Hat Magazine  where they use git add --patch or possibly git add --interactive which allows you to add just parts of a hunk  if you want to split different changes to an individual file  search in that page for  split     Having split the changes  you can now cherry-pick just the ones you want

User · Answer

The simple way  to actually merge specific files from two branches  not just replace specific files with ones from another branch  Step one  Diff the branches git diff branch b  gt  my patch file patch Creates a patch file of the difference between the current branch and branch b Step two  Apply the patch on files matching a pattern git apply -p1 --include pattern matching the path to file or folder my patch file patch Useful notes on the options You can use   as a wildcard in the include pattern  Slashes don t need to be escaped  Also  you could use --exclude instead and apply it to everything except the files matching the pattern  or reverse the patch with -R The -p1 option is a holdover from the  Unix patch command and the fact that the patch file s contents prepend each file name with a  or b   or more depending on how the patch file was generated  which you need to strip  so that it can figure out the real file to the path to the file the patch needs to be applied to  Check out the man page for git-apply for more options  Step three  there is no step three Obviously you d want to commit your changes  but who s to say you don t have some other related tweaks you want to do before making your commit

User · Answer

You use the cherry-pick command to get individual commits from one branch   If the change s  you want are not in individual commits  then use the method shown here to split the commit into individual commits  Roughly speaking  you use git rebase -i to get the original commit to edit  then git reset HEAD  to selectively revert changes  then git commit to commit that bit as a new commit in the history   There is another nice method here in Red Hat Magazine  where they use git add --patch or possibly git add --interactive which allows you to add just parts of a hunk  if you want to split different changes to an individual file  search in that page for  split     Having split the changes  you can now cherry-pick just the ones you want

User · Answer

It s strange that git still does not have such a convenient tool  quot out of the box quot   I use it heavily when update some old version branch  which still has a lot of software users  by just some bugfixes from the current version branch  In this case it is often needed to quickly get just some lines of code from the file in trunk  ignoring a lot of other changes  that are not supposed to go into the old version     And of course interactive three-way merge is needed in this case  git checkout --patch  lt branch gt   lt file path gt  is not usable for this selective merge purpose  You can do it easily  Just add this line to  alias  section in your global  gitconfig or local  git config file   alias      mergetool-file    quot  sh -c  git show  1  2  gt   2 theirs  git show   git merge-base  1   git rev-parse HEAD    2  gt   2 base   C BCompare3 BCompare exe  2 theirs  2  2 base  2  rm -f  2 theirs  rm -f  2 base   - quot   It implies you use Beyond Compare  Just change to software of your choice if needed  Or you can change it to three-way auto-merge if you don t need the interactive selective merging   alias      mergetool-file    quot  sh -c  git show  1  2  gt   2 theirs  git show   git merge-base  1   git rev-parse HEAD    2  gt   2 base  git merge-file  2  2 base  2 theirs  rm -f  2 theirs  rm -f  2 base   - quot   Then use like this  git mergetool-file  lt source branch gt   lt file path gt   This will give you the true selective tree-way merge opportunity of just any file in other branch

User · Answer

To selectively merge files from one branch into another branch  run  git merge --no-ff --no-commit branchX   where branchX is the branch you want to merge from into the current branch   The --no-commit option will stage the files that have been merged by Git without actually committing them  This will give you the opportunity to modify the merged files however you want to and then commit them yourself    Depending on how you want to merge files  there are four cases   1  You want a true merge   In this case  you accept the merged files the way Git merged them automatically and then commit them   2  There are some files you don t want to merge   For example  you want to retain the version in the current branch and ignore the version in the branch you are merging from   To select the version in the current branch  run   git checkout HEAD file1   This will retrieve the version of file1 in the current branch and overwrite the file1 automerged by Git    3  If you want the version in branchX  and not a true merge    Run   git checkout branchX file1   This will retrieve the version of file1 in branchX and overwrite file1 auto-merged by Git   4  The last case is if you want to select only specific merges in file1   In this case  you can edit the modified file1 directly  update it to whatever you d want the version of file1 to become  and then commit   If Git cannot merge a file automatically  it will report the file as  unmerged   and produce a copy where you will need to resolve the conflicts manually       To explain further with an example  let s say you want to merge branchX into the current branch   git merge --no-ff --no-commit branchX   You then run the git status command to view the status of modified files   For example   git status    On branch master   Changes to be committed            modified    file1         modified    file2         modified    file3   Unmerged paths       use  git add rm  lt file gt      as appropriate to mark resolution            both modified       file4     Where file1  file2  and file3 are the files git have successfully auto-merged    What this means is that changes in the master and branchX for all those three files have been combined together without any conflicts   You can inspect how the merge was done by running the git diff --cached   git diff --cached file1 git diff --cached file2 git diff --cached file3   If you find some merge undesirable then you can   edit the file directly save git commit   If you don t want to merge file1 and want to retain the version in the current branch  Run  git checkout HEAD file1   If you don t want to merge file2 and only want the version in branchX  Run  git checkout branchX file2   If you want file3 to be merged automatically  don t do anything   Git has already merged it at this point     file4 above is a failed merge by Git  This means there are changes in both branches that occur on the same line  This is where you will need to resolve the conflicts manually  You can discard the merged done by editing the file directly or running the checkout command for the version in the branch you want file4 to become     Finally  don t forget to git commit

User · Answer

I found this post to contain the simplest answer  Merely do  git checkout  lt branch from which you want files gt   lt file paths gt   Example Pulling  gitignore file from branchB into current branch  git checkout branchB  gitignore  See the post for more information

User · Answer

1800 INFORMATION s answer is completely correct  As someone new to Git  though   quot use git cherry-pick quot  wasn t enough for me to figure this out without a bit more digging on the Internet  so I thought I d post a more detailed guide in case anyone else is in a similar boat  My use case was wanting to selectively pull changes from someone else s GitHub branch into my own  If you already have a local branch with the changes  you only need to do steps 2 and 5-7   Create  if not created  a local branch with the changes you want to bring in    git branch mybranch  lt base branch gt   Switch into it    git checkout mybranch  Pull down the changes you want from the other person s account  If you haven t already  you ll want to add them as a remote    git remote add repos-w-changes  lt git url gt   Pull down everything from their branch    git pull repos-w-changes branch-i-want  View the commit logs to see which changes you want    git log  Switch back to the branch you want to pull the changes into    git checkout originalbranch  Cherry pick your commits  one by one  with the hashes    git cherry-pick -x hash-of-commit

User · Answer

I had the exact same problem as mentioned by you above   But I found this clearer in explaining the answer  Summary   Check out the path s  from the branch you want to merge     git checkout source branch --  lt paths gt      Hint  It also works without  --  like seen in the linked post    or to selectively merge hunks    git checkout -p source branch --  lt paths gt        Alternatively  use reset and then add with the option -p        git reset  lt paths gt           git add -p  lt paths gt       Finally commit    git commit -m  quot  Merge  these changes quot

User · Answer

If you don t have too many files that have changed  this will leave you with no extra commits   1  Duplicate branch temporarily   git checkout -b temp branch  2  Reset to last wanted commit   git reset --hard HEAD n  where n is the number of commits you need to go back  3  Checkout each file from original branch   git checkout origin original branch filename ext  Now you can commit and force push  to overwrite remote   if needed

User · Answer

For me  git reset --soft branch is the easiest way to selectively pick the changes from another branch  since  this command puts in my working tree  all the diff changes  and I can easily pick or revert which one I need    In this way  I have full control over the committed files

User · Answer

I found this post to contain the simplest answer  Merely do  git checkout  lt branch from which you want files gt   lt file paths gt   Example Pulling  gitignore file from branchB into current branch  git checkout branchB  gitignore  See the post for more information

User · Answer

It is not exactly what you were looking for  but it was useful to me   git checkout -p  lt branch gt  --  lt paths gt        It is a mix of some answers

User · Answer

While some of these answers are pretty good  I feel like none actually answered the OP s original constraint  selecting particular files from particular branches   This solution does that  but it may be tedious if there are many files  Let   s say you have the master  exp1  and exp2 branches  You want to merge one file from each of the experimental branches into master  I would do something like this  git checkout master git checkout exp1 path to file a git checkout exp2 path to file b    Save these files as a stash git stash    Merge stash with master git merge stash  This will give you in-file diffs for each of the files you want  Nothing more  Nothing less  It s useful you have radically different file changes between versions --in my case  changing an application from Ruby on Rails 2 to Ruby on Rails 3  This will merge files  but it does a smart merge  I wasn t able to figure out how to use this method to get in-file diff information  maybe it still will for extreme differences  Annoying small things like whitespace get merged back in unless you use the -s recursive -X ignore-all-space option

User · Answer

When only a few files have changed between the current commits of the two branches, I manually merge the changes by going through the different files.

git difftool <branch-1>..<branch-2>

see also https://sites.google.com/site/icusite/setup/git-difftool

User · Answer

You use the cherry-pick command to get individual commits from one branch   If the change s  you want are not in individual commits  then use the method shown here to split the commit into individual commits  Roughly speaking  you use git rebase -i to get the original commit to edit  then git reset HEAD  to selectively revert changes  then git commit to commit that bit as a new commit in the history   There is another nice method here in Red Hat Magazine  where they use git add --patch or possibly git add --interactive which allows you to add just parts of a hunk  if you want to split different changes to an individual file  search in that page for  split     Having split the changes  you can now cherry-pick just the ones you want

User · Answer

I had the exact same problem as mentioned by you above   But I found this Git blog clearer in explaining the answer  Command from the above link    You are in the branch you want to merge to git checkout  lt branch you want to merge from gt   lt file paths    gt

User · Answer

Here is how you can replace Myclass java file in master branch with Myclass java in feature1 branch  It will work even if Myclass java doesn t exist on master   git checkout master git checkout feature1 Myclass java   Note this will overwrite - not merge - and ignore local changes in the master branch rather

User · Answer

I would do a  git diff commit1  commit2 filepattern   git-apply --index  amp  amp  git commit  This way you can limit the range of commits for a filepattern from a branch  It is stolen from Re  How to pull only a few files from one branch to another

User · Answer

The easiest way is to set your repository to the branch you want to merge with  and then run git checkout  branch with file   path to file you would like to merge   If you run git status  you will see the file already staged    Then run git commit -m  quot Merge changes on   branch   to  file  quot   Simple

User · Answer

It is not exactly what you were looking for  but it was useful to me   git checkout -p  lt branch gt  --  lt paths gt        It is a mix of some answers

User · Answer

You use the cherry-pick command to get individual commits from one branch   If the change s  you want are not in individual commits  then use the method shown here to split the commit into individual commits  Roughly speaking  you use git rebase -i to get the original commit to edit  then git reset HEAD  to selectively revert changes  then git commit to commit that bit as a new commit in the history   There is another nice method here in Red Hat Magazine  where they use git add --patch or possibly git add --interactive which allows you to add just parts of a hunk  if you want to split different changes to an individual file  search in that page for  split     Having split the changes  you can now cherry-pick just the ones you want

User · Answer

I wrote my own script called  pmerge  to partially merge directories  It s a work in progress and I m still learning both Git and Bash scripting  This command uses git merge --no-commit and then unapplies changes that don t match the path provided  Usage  git pmerge branch path  Example  git merge develop src  I haven t tested it extensively  The working directory should be free of any uncommitted changes and untracked files     bin bash  E BADARGS 65  if      -ne 2   then     echo  quot Usage   basename  0  branch path quot      exit  E BADARGS fi  git merge  1 --no-commit IFS    n     List of changes due to merge   replace nulls with newlines   strip lines to just filenames   ensure lines are unique for f in   git status --porcelain -z -uno   tr   000    n    sed -e  s     graph      space     1         uniq   do         f     2      amp  amp  continue     if git reset  f  gt  dev null 2 gt  amp 1  then           Reset failed    file was previously unversioned         echo Deleting  f         rm  f     else         echo Reverting  f         git checkout --  f  gt  dev null 2 gt  amp 1     fi done unset IFS

User · Answer

Here s how you can get history to follow just a couple of files from another branch with a minimum of fuss  even if a more  quot simple quot  merge would have brought over a lot more changes that you don t want  First  you ll take the unusual step of declaring in advance that what you re about to commit is a merge  without Git doing anything at all to the files in your working directory  git merge --no-ff --no-commit -s ours branchname1      where  quot branchname quot  is whatever you claim to be merging from  If you were to commit right away  it would make no changes  but it would still show ancestry from the other branch  You can add more branches  tags  etc  to the command line if you need to  as well  At this point though  there are no changes to commit  so get the files from the other revisions  next  git checkout branchname1 -- file1 file2 etc   If you were merging from more than one other branch  repeat as needed  git checkout branchname2 -- file3 file4 etc   Now the files from the other branch are in the index  ready to be committed  with history  git commit  And you ll have a lot of explaining to do in that commit message  Please note though  in case it wasn t clear  that this is a messed up thing to do  It is not in the spirit of what a  quot branch quot  is for  and cherry-pick is a more honest way to do what you d be doing  here  If you wanted to do another  quot merge quot  for other files on the same branch that you didn t bring over last time  it will stop you with an  quot already up to date quot  message  It s a symptom of not branching when we should have  in that the  quot from quot  branch should be more than one different branch

User · Answer

Here s how you can get history to follow just a couple of files from another branch with a minimum of fuss  even if a more  quot simple quot  merge would have brought over a lot more changes that you don t want  First  you ll take the unusual step of declaring in advance that what you re about to commit is a merge  without Git doing anything at all to the files in your working directory  git merge --no-ff --no-commit -s ours branchname1      where  quot branchname quot  is whatever you claim to be merging from  If you were to commit right away  it would make no changes  but it would still show ancestry from the other branch  You can add more branches  tags  etc  to the command line if you need to  as well  At this point though  there are no changes to commit  so get the files from the other revisions  next  git checkout branchname1 -- file1 file2 etc   If you were merging from more than one other branch  repeat as needed  git checkout branchname2 -- file3 file4 etc   Now the files from the other branch are in the index  ready to be committed  with history  git commit  And you ll have a lot of explaining to do in that commit message  Please note though  in case it wasn t clear  that this is a messed up thing to do  It is not in the spirit of what a  quot branch quot  is for  and cherry-pick is a more honest way to do what you d be doing  here  If you wanted to do another  quot merge quot  for other files on the same branch that you didn t bring over last time  it will stop you with an  quot already up to date quot  message  It s a symptom of not branching when we should have  in that the  quot from quot  branch should be more than one different branch

User · Answer

1800 INFORMATION s answer is completely correct  As someone new to Git  though   quot use git cherry-pick quot  wasn t enough for me to figure this out without a bit more digging on the Internet  so I thought I d post a more detailed guide in case anyone else is in a similar boat  My use case was wanting to selectively pull changes from someone else s GitHub branch into my own  If you already have a local branch with the changes  you only need to do steps 2 and 5-7   Create  if not created  a local branch with the changes you want to bring in    git branch mybranch  lt base branch gt   Switch into it    git checkout mybranch  Pull down the changes you want from the other person s account  If you haven t already  you ll want to add them as a remote    git remote add repos-w-changes  lt git url gt   Pull down everything from their branch    git pull repos-w-changes branch-i-want  View the commit logs to see which changes you want    git log  Switch back to the branch you want to pull the changes into    git checkout originalbranch  Cherry pick your commits  one by one  with the hashes    git cherry-pick -x hash-of-commit

User · Answer

To selectively merge files from one branch into another branch  run  git merge --no-ff --no-commit branchX   where branchX is the branch you want to merge from into the current branch   The --no-commit option will stage the files that have been merged by Git without actually committing them  This will give you the opportunity to modify the merged files however you want to and then commit them yourself    Depending on how you want to merge files  there are four cases   1  You want a true merge   In this case  you accept the merged files the way Git merged them automatically and then commit them   2  There are some files you don t want to merge   For example  you want to retain the version in the current branch and ignore the version in the branch you are merging from   To select the version in the current branch  run   git checkout HEAD file1   This will retrieve the version of file1 in the current branch and overwrite the file1 automerged by Git    3  If you want the version in branchX  and not a true merge    Run   git checkout branchX file1   This will retrieve the version of file1 in branchX and overwrite file1 auto-merged by Git   4  The last case is if you want to select only specific merges in file1   In this case  you can edit the modified file1 directly  update it to whatever you d want the version of file1 to become  and then commit   If Git cannot merge a file automatically  it will report the file as  unmerged   and produce a copy where you will need to resolve the conflicts manually       To explain further with an example  let s say you want to merge branchX into the current branch   git merge --no-ff --no-commit branchX   You then run the git status command to view the status of modified files   For example   git status    On branch master   Changes to be committed            modified    file1         modified    file2         modified    file3   Unmerged paths       use  git add rm  lt file gt      as appropriate to mark resolution            both modified       file4     Where file1  file2  and file3 are the files git have successfully auto-merged    What this means is that changes in the master and branchX for all those three files have been combined together without any conflicts   You can inspect how the merge was done by running the git diff --cached   git diff --cached file1 git diff --cached file2 git diff --cached file3   If you find some merge undesirable then you can   edit the file directly save git commit   If you don t want to merge file1 and want to retain the version in the current branch  Run  git checkout HEAD file1   If you don t want to merge file2 and only want the version in branchX  Run  git checkout branchX file2   If you want file3 to be merged automatically  don t do anything   Git has already merged it at this point     file4 above is a failed merge by Git  This means there are changes in both branches that occur on the same line  This is where you will need to resolve the conflicts manually  You can discard the merged done by editing the file directly or running the checkout command for the version in the branch you want file4 to become     Finally  don t forget to git commit

User · Answer

I don t like the above approaches   Using cherry-pick is great for picking a single change  but it is a pain if you want to bring in all the changes except for some bad ones   Here is my approach   There is no --interactive argument you can pass to git merge   Here is the alternative   You have some changes in branch  feature  and you want to bring some but not all of them over to  master  in a not sloppy way  i e  you don t want to cherry pick and commit each one   git checkout feature git checkout -b temp git rebase -i master    Above will drop you in an editor and pick the changes you want ala  pick 7266df7 First change pick 1b3f7df Another change pick 5bbf56f Last change    Rebase b44c147  5bbf56f onto b44c147     Commands    pick   use commit   edit   use commit  but stop for amending   squash   use commit  but meld into previous commit     If you remove a line here THAT COMMIT WILL BE LOST    However  if you remove everything  the rebase will be aborted     git checkout master git pull   temp git branch -d temp   So just wrap that in a shell script  change master into  to and change feature into  from and you are good to go      bin bash   git-interactive-merge from  1 to  2 git checkout  from git checkout -b   from  tmp git rebase -i  to   Above will drop you in an editor and pick the changes you want git checkout  to git pull     from  tmp git branch -d   from  tmp

User · Answer

If you don t have too many files that have changed  this will leave you with no extra commits   1  Duplicate branch temporarily   git checkout -b temp branch  2  Reset to last wanted commit   git reset --hard HEAD n  where n is the number of commits you need to go back  3  Checkout each file from original branch   git checkout origin original branch filename ext  Now you can commit and force push  to overwrite remote   if needed

User · Answer

I would do a  git diff commit1  commit2 filepattern   git-apply --index  amp  amp  git commit  This way you can limit the range of commits for a filepattern from a branch  It is stolen from Re  How to pull only a few files from one branch to another

User · Answer

This is my workflow for merging selective files    Make a new branch  this will be temporary  git checkout -b newbranch    Grab the changes git merge --no-commit  featurebranch    Unstage those changes git reset HEAD  You can now see the files from the merge are unstaged     Now you can chose which files are to be merged  git add -p    Remember to  quot git add quot  any new files you wish to keep git commit

User · Answer

There is another way to go  git checkout -p  It is a mix between git checkout and git add -p and might quite be exactly what you are looking for     -p  --patch        Interactively select hunks in the difference between the  lt tree-ish gt          or the index  if unspecified  and the working tree  The chosen        hunks are then applied in reverse to the working tree  and if a         lt tree-ish gt  was specified  the index           This means that you can use git checkout -p to selectively discard        edits from your current working tree  See the    Interactive Mode           section of git-add 1  to learn how to operate the --patch mode

User · Answer

While some of these answers are pretty good  I feel like none actually answered the OP s original constraint  selecting particular files from particular branches   This solution does that  but it may be tedious if there are many files  Let   s say you have the master  exp1  and exp2 branches  You want to merge one file from each of the experimental branches into master  I would do something like this  git checkout master git checkout exp1 path to file a git checkout exp2 path to file b    Save these files as a stash git stash    Merge stash with master git merge stash  This will give you in-file diffs for each of the files you want  Nothing more  Nothing less  It s useful you have radically different file changes between versions --in my case  changing an application from Ruby on Rails 2 to Ruby on Rails 3  This will merge files  but it does a smart merge  I wasn t able to figure out how to use this method to get in-file diff information  maybe it still will for extreme differences  Annoying small things like whitespace get merged back in unless you use the -s recursive -X ignore-all-space option

[git] How can I selectively merge or pick changes from another branch in Git?

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Examples related to git-merge

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