Move previous commits to another branch

Question

History looks like follows:

master branch     1-2-3-4
                         \
feature branch            5-6-7

I realized changes 2, 3 and 4 should have also gone into my feature branch and would like to move them as shown below.

master branch     1
                   \
feature branch      2-3-4-5-6-7

How should I go about? Nobody else is using my repo, I haven't pushed the commits since creating the branch and all changes are committed.

Jonathan Hall · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-20 13:23:27Z

4

Just delete the offending commits from master. They'll still be in your feature branch:

git checkout master
git reset --hard 1          # Replace '1' with the actual SHA for the commit 
git push -f origin master   # Sync to remote, if applicable

edited Jul 20, 2019 at 13:23

answered Jul 20, 2019 at 13:21

Jonathan Hall

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6 Comments

Tim Biegeleisen Over a year ago

Or git reset --hard HEAD~3

Jonathan Hall Over a year ago

@TimBiegeleisen: Yes, of course. If you know you need to remove exactly 3 commits. I prefer the sha, because off-by-one errors are less likely... but in any case, be careful :)

Romain Valeri Over a year ago

Good solution, upvoted. Just to mention it, you might even skip the need to checkout master if you instead move the ref with git branch -f master 1 then push as you did.

Jonathan Hall Over a year ago

@RomainValeri: Also valid. Although the OP says nothing's been pushed, so I added that final command mainly for the benefit of any future readers.

Jonathan Hall Over a year ago

"Branches" are nothing more than pointers to a spot on the tree. So you don't actually delete the commits--you just move the master pointer from one commit to another.

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