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Say I made several commits and wish to cherry pick which ones I push to the remote repository. How can I do that (in ascii: C1->C2->C3->C4 and I want to push C2 and C4). Will reordering with rebase, resetting, pushing and then resetting work? (C1->C2->C3->C4 => C2->C4->C1->C3 => reset C4 => push => reset C3). Is there a nicer way?

IttayD
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  • Yes, you can rewrite history (or create separate branch with required history) and then push. This is the only way. – Jakub Narębski Nov 24 '09 at 10:17
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    Me also was looking for the same issue. This resource might be useful https://miteshshah.github.io/linux/git/how-to-push-single-commit-with-git/ – Adil Aliyev Dec 30 '15 at 02:31

4 Answers4

96

You may be looking for:

git push origin $commit:$branch

Credit: http://blog.dennisrobinson.name/push-only-one-commit-with-git/

Explanatory notes:

  • Pushing a commit pushes all commits before it (as Amber said). The key is to reorder your commits first (git rebase -i), so they are in the order you want to push them.
  • $commit doesn't have to be a sha1. For example, "HEAD~N" would push everything before the last N commits.
  • $branch (typically "master" or "main") is the branch you push to – the remote branch. It does not have to be the same as a local branch.
  • The suggested branch + cherry-pick method (suggested by midtiby) works too, but for reordering purposes (such as getting the prework in first), this avoids creating throwaway branches.

If the branch does not exist remotely, and you want to create it, it must be prefixed with refs/heads/ (to disambiguate branch from tag):

git push origin $commit:refs/heads/$new_branch

Pro tip: git-revise is a similar but better tool than git rebase (for local commits specifically). For my purposes, as a daily git user, I think it should be obligatory if you use git revise -i a lot (which is of course quite necessary to produce high quality commits).

user2394284
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If you have your commits on a private branch, you can cherry pick commits from the private branch and apply them to the official branch. At this point you can now push all your commits on the official branch (which is the subset that you previously cherry picked).

midtiby
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    Or if you commits were on the official branch you can cherry pick into a temporary branch and push it to the remote official branch. ummm...right? – andho Apr 12 '11 at 04:22
  • IMHO The simplest and most usable technique. – Benj Apr 25 '17 at 13:07
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$ git push <remote name> <commit hash>:<remote branch name>

# Example:
$ git push origin 2dc2b7e393e6b712ef103eaac81050b9693395a4:master
Nikhil Thombare
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IIRC, due to how git considers commits to work, C4 inherently includes C3, so the concept of "pushing C4 but not C3" doesn't make sense to git (and likewise C2 relative to C1). (See the answer to this previous question.)

Community
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Amber
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    Untrue! C4 references C3 as its parent, but the other answer is more correct: you can cherry pick commits out of the history and apply them to different parents. – Dan Fitch Nov 27 '09 at 16:35
  • Isn't it more like C4 inherently applies it's changes to C3 but C4's changes are it's own. – andho Apr 12 '11 at 04:26
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    Using `git cherry-pick` on `C4` to apply it to a different branch will not result in `C4` on the new branch, but rather `C4'`, a different (but similar) commit. If someone later merged in the branch with `C4` on it, issues might arise. – Amber Apr 14 '11 at 16:24