Commit to another branch without touching unstaged files

Question

I have two branches, say B1 and B2. I'm in B2 and I have staged and unstaged files.

I want the staged files to be committed in B1 (I thought I was in B1 when I git add-ed the files) and the unstaged ones to be committed in B2.

Is it possible? How?

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:04

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I'm sure there's a more elegant way but all I could come up with is:

Commit staged files to B2
Stash the unstaged work on B2
Switch to B1, then cherry-pick the latest commit of B2 in B1
Switch back to B2, reset the latest commit (--hard way)
Stage and commit the stashed work on B2

EDIT

This question has a detailed answer that does more or less what I've suggested.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:04

Community

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answered Jan 31 '13 at 08:46

aefxx

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score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 31 '13 at 09:22

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git stash is really powerful when it comes to move dirty changes between branches. In your case, you can apply these steps:

git stash --keep-index, this will stash only unstaged files
git stash, this will stash the rest, i.e. staged files
switch to B1
git stash pop, staged files will be moved to B1
switch to B2
git stash pop, unstaged files will be moved to B2

After that, you can commit the changes in each branch individually.

answered Jan 31 '13 at 09:22

ogzd

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Yep, this is nice, plus I didn't know it was possible to stash multiple states. – gregseth Jan 31 '13 at 10:41
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You can think of stash structure in Git as a stack. – ogzd Jan 31 '13 at 10:44

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 31 '13 at 09:15

If the modfied staged and unstaged files does not change by switching to branch B1, you can switch branches without affecting anything, then you can easily commit your files and switch back to B2.

However if your modified files are changed between B1 and B2, you cannot switch branches. In this case, you have to stash your changes before swithcing branches.

git stash --keep-index to stash and keep staged files
git reset HEAD to unstage staged files
git stash to stash your previousely staged files
git checkout B1 to switch to B1 branch
git stash pop to unstash and remove your last stash
git commit -a to commit your previousely staged files on B1
git checkout B2 to switch to B2 branch
git stash pop
git commit -a commit all the remaining changes on B2

Be carefull with these commands! I'm not a git pro! :-)

Commit to another branch without touching unstaged files

3 Answers3