Bring Changes from a commit HEAD into a branch

Question

I have a feature branch ff which is based on main.

I want to bring changes made by a commit HEAD abcde on top of ff.

How can I do this?

• dani-vta: git-scm.com/docs/git-cherry-pick
• Romain Valeri: Yes, basically it's git checkout ff then git cherry-pick abcde (regardless of abcde being a commit hash or a branch name, which is unclear from your question). What do you call "a commit HEAD" here?
• eftshift0: Following on @RomainValeri's steps, it's also possible, to avoid having to look for the commit id, to do git checkout ff; git cherry-pick HEAD@{1}.
• eftshift0: And @RomainValeri is also to ask what you mean with HEAD abcde? Just in case, HEAD in git is always where you are standing.
• eftshift0: I think the confusion might have been introduced early on from the svn jargon where HEAD is just the last revision of a repo.

Answer 1

Assuming you have checked out commit abcde directly, which means your HEAD is in a detached state, and you want to bring the changes made in that commit on top of your feature branch ff, you can use git cherry-pick.

git checkout ff
git cherry-pick abcde

git cherry-pick abcde takes the changes introduced in commit abcde and applies them as a new commit on top of your current branch ff. This ensures that you bring only that specific commit without affecting other commits from the branch it originally belonged to.

If you encounter merge conflicts, Git will pause the cherry-pick and allow you to resolve them. After resolving, run:

git cherry-pick --continue

If you want to abort the cherry-pick due to conflicts, use:

git cherry-pick --abort