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

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.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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 <other_branch_name> <files/to/grab in/list/separated/by/spaces> -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 :)

Answer 4

Merge a branch into new one (squash) and remove the files not needed:

git checkout master
git checkout -b <branch>
git merge --squash <source-branch-with-many-commits>
git reset HEAD <not-needed-file-1>
git checkout -- <not-needed-file-1>
git reset HEAD <not-needed-file-2>
git checkout -- <not-needed-file-2>
git commit