I’m still fairly new to the Git way of thinking, and I use it almost exclusively through the VSCode GUI and the Github desktop application, so bear with me if my thinking or terminology is backwards or sideways.
I frequently find myself in the situation that I do some work, then realise some of the work I’ve just done should have been done in a different branch than I’m in and need to move those changes to another branch. But this only applies to some of the changes in the current branch – the rest of the changes in the branch do belong where they are and should stay put. Usually it’ll be just a small handful of files I want to move, while perhaps 40 or 50 files should stay where they are.
There are lots of questions and tutorials on how to change branches and move all your uncommitted changes to another branch; I can also find questions on how to cherry-pick from an existing commit (like this one – but Google as I might, I cannot find any descriptions of how to move only specific, selected, uncommitted changes to a different branch. That is,
the changes are not committed in the current branch (and I don’t want to commit them there, because they don’t belong in that branch)
the changes to move are only a subset of the total number of changes in the current branch
after the move, the changes should disappear from the current branch and be added to existing changes in the other branch so that I can commit them in that branch
I can cherry-pick the files manually (file by file) or I can stage or unstage the particular changes I want to move or not move; either way is fine with me (or if there’s another way, that’d be fine too).
Theoretically, I would imagine I should be able to stash the changes in current branch excluding the files I want to move, and then switch to the other branch. I’ve found a description of how to stash specific files, but not a way to do the opposite, stashing everything except specific files.
Is there some relatively simple way to accomplish this?
Of course, as always happens, a solution occurred to me right after posting here… Very possibly not the best or easiest way of doing it, but it works.
It can be done in a few, relatively simple steps combining staging and stashing:
Stage the changes you want to bring over to the other branch
Stash your unstaged changes with git stash -ku (k for keep-index, which limits it to unstaged changes, u for including untracked files)
Switch to the branch you want and commit the changes there
Switch back to the branch you were in and apply/pop your stash with git stash apply git stash pop
For reasons I don’t really understand, the staged changes also reappeared when I applied my stash, but since they were now committed in the other branch, I could just unstage and discard them in the current branch.
Related
A PR was accidentally merged into main before it had been properly sanitized which I think has resulted in their being no revert option. The lack of an option suggests that it is not possible/simple?
https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/incorporating-changes-from-a-pull-request/reverting-a-pull-request
I have write permissions to the repo in question.
A revert is just a commit like any other commit. So, you can certainly revert the merge commit and push that, possibly as a PR if you're not able to push directly to main.
However, note that this reverses the effect of the merge without undoing the topology. You won't be able to merge those same commits again later.
In theory you can force main to go backwards to a commit before this bad merge took place, erasing the unwanted commits since then, or force main to point directly to the commit at the end of the good branch — namely by using a hard reset. But in practice, where you're sharing this repo with others, that would be a pretty terrible idea.
Keeps track of files in eclipse, who made changes on which branch
Hello Guys, I am using BitBucket for project management, and i Create different branches as per features. Multiple teams works on their own branches and some time multiple teams make changes in same file.
So at the time of release I have to merge all the created branches in one major branch, but at time of merge i get a lot of merge conflicts,
So basically what i want, when developer going to make changes in any file, dev will get to know all submitted changes in another branches for this same file, (where dev going to make changes), So he or she will know the possible scenarios.
An alternative is to ask for a developer to rebase his/her own branch on top of the main branch first.
Then you can merge that branch easily enough.
That way:
if there are any conflicts, they are detected and resolve by the developer (who knows best how to resolve it)
each merge is a trivial one.
I am using the git plugin for eclipse and I have noticed a problem with it and hoping this is a simple configuration change. Can anyone help?
When switching branches, the uncommitted changes are being merged across onto the newly checked out branch (only in certain circumstances). It seems as if this happens every time when it is "safe" to do so. The way to recreate is:
Create feature branch "branch1" from remote repository
Create feature branch "branch2" from same remote repository
Make changes on "branch2" and don't commit changes.
Switch to "branch1"
a. No confirmation message is shown.
b. The uncommitted changes from "branch2" are merged onto "branch1"
I want to be able to force the commit message to appear (just like it does using git-bash). Is this possible?
To my understanding, this behavior is intended by EGit: a checkout is performed as long as the files to be checked out do not collide with the working directory. And uncommitted changes are left as they are.
If you think EGit should offer a different strategy of handling uncommitted changes I suggest to open an enhancement request: https://eclipse.org/egit/support/
In the meanwhile, you may want to (manually) stash uncommitted changes prior to switching branches. That's what I see most people do in this situation.
I'm trying to identify the proper way of working with multiple branches on Gerrit that would match our workflow.
The way we work with branches right now is: we have master & feature branch. Master is the branch we want to polish and make it ready for release, while feature is obviously a field of intensive work. Now, in our particular case whenever somebody works on a bug fix, they:
create a change targeted for master branch
cherry pick it to the feature branch targeted change
once gerrit code review completes, submit both changes.
now the way i understand cherry-pick, it selects individual commit and merges it to the current change. if that is the case, i would expect to have no merge conflicts in the end, and indeed this workflow works perfectly with just GIT. Gerrit, however, most likely due to its nature (branches are not merged remotely the way these are locally and get a different sha tag) lists a tremendous number of conflicting files in the end.
Now, I resolved all these issues by applying merge strategy (ours on feature, theirs on master), but it does not feel right: if anything was not propagated, it just got discarded.
My question is: is there a safe workflow, similar to the above one, that would in the end produce a clean merge with gerrit?
I would say that it's better, in this case, to merge than to cherry pick.
A cherry pick adds the same changes but not the same commit. So while the source is the same on a cherry pick and merge the git tree is different. When the tree is different and you later do a merge git will think that the commit you previously cherry picked is missing and try to merge that change as well, even if the actual code is already there. That's probably why you get a lot of conflicts.
I would propose another way of working.
When you do normal work you develop on feature and push to Gerrit as normal.
When you do a patch (ie bug fix) on the stable production environment you do that directly on master (or local branches if you like but not on feature)
When the patch as been approved in Gerrit it get's merged into the real master and you can make a pull request to get that change to your local copy. Your version of master is now the same as Gerrits master
Now you would merge all new changes on master into feature. Make sure you do a rebase so that the patch ends up before anything you've already done on feature
Once it's time to deploy all new features you can merge feature into master, push to Gerrit (if you have permissions you can by pass gerrit by pushing directly to master instead of refs/for/master as these changes are already reviewed)
Once all changes are on Gerrits master you do a pull on your master and a merge into feature with rebase making feature a clean branch to work on. It's of course totally valid to have a new feature each release. Both work fine.
I'm a little confused, as this flow should work just fine. If other users submit changes before your bug fix is reviewed/verified/submitted, that could result in merge conflicts, but that should be rare.
If you:
Fix a bug on master
Push to review (creating change A in gerrit)
cherry-pick change A on top of the feature branch (resolving any conflicts from master to feature)
Push the cherry-picked change to review (creating change B)
Review/verify/submit changes A & B
Everything will work fine. The only way for merge conflicts to occur is if other users upload and submit changes between steps 1 and 5. Are you seeing different behavior? Can you provide more details?
I am looking forward to merge my code which I developed in a branch of SVN to the trunk. I am using Eclipse and I have been using Team->Commit to commit my updates to the SVN. But I haven't done a merge before. Please help me with this.
First of all make sure you are up to date. Update your working copy of the target branch, ie. where you are merging into. In this example we're working on the trunk of "core" and we want to grab the changes that have happened in the maintenance branch and merge them.
Resolve any conflicts. There should be no conflicts at this stage between the working copy and the repository.
Select the SVN merge option on the working copy. In Eclipse this is going to be found under the "Team" menu and called "Merge Branch".
SVN: Merging in Eclipse
Change the From URL to the specific branch you want to be merged into your working copy. In this example we're looking for the p400 maintenance branch (./core/branches/p400).
Change the From Revision to the last revision that was merged into the target branch. Essentially you don't want to keep merging the whole branch history, you just want to include those changes since the last time you merged. There is no easy way to determine the last merge point at this time in Subversion. You have to review your message log and look for the last commit that talks about merging. If you are disciplined about the commit messages you use for merging this should be easy (see below). Make a note of what that revision is -- you'll need this later when you commit your changes.
SVN: Merge with Eclipse
Change the To Revision to the latest (i.e. head). Make a note of what that revision is -- you'll need this later when you commit your changes.
Click Merge and wait. Depending on how big the differences are this may be quick or Eclipse my just fall over. If you have such an enormous change that you can't get it done in Eclipse you may need to make the range of revisions you are merging smaller. Or you may even have to skip certain revisions and do them manually if they are massive. We've had this problem from time to time when updating large third-party libraries. The vast majority of the time you will be fine.
Review changes and resolve conflicts. Once the merge is complete, look through the changes made to your working copy and make sure you address any conflicts you find.
Once all the changes have been resolved in the target working copy, check them in with a single commit. The reason you're not doing lots of commits is that these are changes that should have been documented in the branch from which you merged. The commit message needs to be in a specific format that details the merge and is easy to find in the future. We use the following format, but you can use anything that works for you -- as long as you stick to it.
Merging [source] to [target]; [repository]. Merge rev [start]:[end]
Enjoy!
In eclipse we have an option to merge. Right click the project , you will see "Team" option and on clicking it you will see merge option. There are three different options you can see in the merge.
To successfully merge the changes from the branch to the trunk, we need to switch the local workspace to the trunk (but make sure all the changes are committed to the branch before that). Once we do that we can use merge option and select "2 URLs" option. I put url for trunk as url 1 and the branch I wanted to merge as url 2. I could see all the incoming changes I selected "OK". All the changes are in my local now (at this point my workspace is linked to the trunk). Then I committed my changes to the trunk and hence merge from branch to the trunk was successful.
I would like to add for Point 8 .Review changes and resolve conflicts. ---
When working on conflicts manually- when you do copy from right to left on chunks of code - Be careful
Sometimes chunk of code gets added, sometimes it properly replaces the chunk.
Make sure there is no duplicate chunk of code.
Also, this is helpful-- What is the proper way to do a Subversion merge in Eclipse?