~/ Clean up Commits with git cherry-pick -n

2014-05-23

Sometimes I binge code for like 3+ hours and work on several unrelated things. Since I'm so in the zone, I often forget to commit regularly, and am left with a bunch of changes not yet staged for commit when I take a break:

ffffffaaaacccckkkkkk!!!!!!!

First, I stage the changes:

$ git add .

And then create a new branch and prefix the branch name with wip

$ git checkout -b wip/clean-me

This produces a git log that looks like:

* 5a639f3  (HEAD, wip/clean-me) 48 seconds ago Jesse shawl
|  Please clean this branch|
|  five  | 0
|  four  | 0
|  one   | 0
|  seven | 0
|  six   | 0
|  three | 0
|  two   | 0
|  7 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
|
* 24784a5  (master) 6 hours ago Jesse shawl
   initial commit
   readme.md | 0
   1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

I can always come back to this point as long as I commit, but in this post, I'll walk through the process of making sense of this otherwise meaningless commit.

Getting only the changes you want/need

Let's say that 5a639f3 contains a few hot fixes that should be added to master. I want to pull in the file changes to one, two, and three, but not four, five, six, and seven.

To move a commit to a new branch, you normally git cherry-pick 5a639f3 while on the master branch. But, this will just add a new commit on master that's identical to the wip/clean-me branch. This doesn't do much for us.

Instead, we can git cherry-pick -n 5a639f3 to cherry-pick the changes without making a commit. This will allow us to edit the index (or staging area) before making the next commit.

$ git cherry-pick -n 5a639f3

After running this command, git status will tell me that I have changes that need to be committed:

On branch master
 Changes to be committed:
  (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)

new file:   five
new file:   four
new file:   one
new file:   seven
new file:   six
new file:   three
new file:   two

At this point, I reset my HEAD to move these changes out of the staging area. This means that I can add back in the changes I want with git add <path> and/or view the diffs without having to use the --staged option.

$ git reset HEAD

You can now add the files you want to the staging area individually:

$ git add one two three

And finally, make the commit.

This leaves us with a git log that looks like:

* 07ac794  (HEAD, master) 6 seconds ago Jesse shawl
|  Add hotfixes that should be deployed asap|
|  one   | 0
|  three | 0
|  two   | 0
|  3 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

| * 5a639f3  (wip/please-clean-me) 17 minutes ago Jesse shawl
|/   Please clean this branch|
|    five  | 0
|    four  | 0
|    one   | 0
|    seven | 0
|    six   | 0
|    three | 0
|    two   | 0
|    7 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

* 24784a5  7 hours ago Jesse shawl
   initial commit
   readme.md | 0
   1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

At this point, we've added the important changes from the please-clean-me branch to master. The changes still exist on your existing branch if you need to go back later and make changes.

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~/ Posted by Jesse Shawl on 2014-05-23