Move a commit made to the wrong branch to the right one in Git
— Git — 6 min read
In this post, we're going to go over two methods to move a commit made to the wrong branch to the right one in Git.
While learning about both these methods, we'll consider the example of a sample git repo.
This repo will have three branches:
- master
- wrong-branch
- right-branch
The master branch will have an initial commit to kick things off with a single committed file named "m1.txt".
The wrong branch will have two commits of its own(three in total including the initial commit from the master branch). Each of these commits will correspond to files "wb1.txt" and "wb2.txt" respectively.
The right branch will also have two commits of its own for files "rb1.txt" and "rb2.txt".
We'll then accidentally commit a new file, "rb3.txt" to the wrong-branch which was actually meant for the right-branch.
If we do a git log, we can see that wrong-branch now has a new commit at the top pointed to by HEAD which is actually the accidental commit that should have been made to the right-branch.
This completes our sample git repo setup and now we'll try to "move" this commit over to the right-branch.
Method 1: Move commit using git cherrypick
Step 1: Checkout the wrong-branch, do a git log and note down the commit id of the commit you want to move. In our sample git repo, this commit id is "f6888999f582f6451a5a9edc7fa942f5b04c8452" ( please see the previous screenshot ).
Step 2: Checkout the right-branch, and execute this command using the commit id from the previous step.
git cherry-pick f6888999f582f6451a5a9edc7fa942f5b04c8452Do a git log. The right-branch now has a new third commit. As you can see in the screenshot below, "rb3.txt" is now a part of the right-branch. Even the commit message is the same. The only thing that has changed is the commit id since this is a new commit.
Step 3: Last step is to remove the accidental commit and its changes from the wrong-branch because they don't belong there. Checkout the wrong-branch and execute this command:
git reset --hard HEAD~This command will remove the changes of the most recent commit from the Committed snapshot, Staging area and Working Copy area of the wrong-branch.
If you do a git log after executing the above command, you'll notice the accidental commit is gone, HEAD is pointing to the proper commit and "rb3.txt" is nowhere to be found in the Working Copy area, Staging area or Committed Snapshot of the wrong-branch.
If you want to cherry-pick multiple commits, you can separate the commit IDs with spaces like this:
git cherry-pick <commit-ID #1> <commit-ID #2> <commit-ID #3>. For more info, please refer to this stack-overflow thread.
Method 2: Move commit using git reset and git stash
Step 1: Checkout the wrong-branch. Execute this command:
git reset HEAD~This command will perform a mixed reset on the "most recent commit" in the wrong-branch. Changes will be removed from the Committed Snapshot and the Staging area but they will be retained in the Working Copy area as "un-staged' changes. In our sample git repo example, "rb3.txt" will appear as an un-staged and un-tracked file in the Working Copy area.
If you do a git log on the wrong-branch after executing the above command, you'll notice that the accidental commit is no more a part of the branch( please see the below screenshot ).
Furthermore, a git status will reveal that "rb3.txt" has indeed been added to the Working Copy area as an un-tracked file.
Step 2: We'll now execute this command and push "rb3.txt" to Git's "Stash" area.
git stash push rb3.txt -uThis command basically tells git to "push" an "un-tracked file"( denoted by the -u flag ) named "rb3.txt" into the stash.
If you do a git status after executing the above command, you'll no longer see "rb3.txt" in the Working Copy area.
Step 3: Checkout the right-branch and execute this command:
git stash popIf you do a git status, you'll see that "rb3.txt" has been added to the Working Copy area of the right-branch.
Woo Hoo🎉! Now you can do a git add followed by a git commit to commit "rb3.txt" to the right branch.
For performing a mixed reset in Step 1 with multiple commits, you can specify the number of commits you want to revert like this:
git reset HEAD~2orgit reset HEAD~3. Here is a blog post that explains how to usegit resetin mixed mode.
Which method should you use?
If the changes you want to move are all committed, then you can use Method 1 because git cherry-pick will only move over the changes from the commit and will not move any uncommitted changes from the Working Copy area or the Staging area.
If some of the changes you want to move over to the other branch are a part of the commit while other changes are not yet committed and in the Staging or the Working Copy area, you should use Method 2. By using different variations of the git stash command you can include the changes that you want to carry over to the other branch whether un-tracked, un-staged, staged or committed.