Quick Notes

Things that came on the way

Making a Git Pull Request for Specific Commits

Time to time when working on a project using a fork from a git repository, situations arise that a pull request need to be made to the master repository for a sub set of commits you made to the fork. The following are a set of steps which can help with accomplishing these scenarios.

  • On the git repository in your local machine created from your fork, create a new branch
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git branch cherry-branch origin/master

  • The assumption is that there is only one branch in your fork and the master repository and origin is pointing to your github fork.

  • Switch to the new branch created

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git checkout cherry-branch
  • You can verify that you are on the correct branch by running the command
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git branch

  • Identify ids of the commits you want to include into the pull request from your github fork.

  • Issue a git cherry-pick command to include the commits into the new branch

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git cherry-pick COMMIT-ID
  • Push the new branch to your fork
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git push origin cherry-branch
  • On github you can now see the new branch in your fork with only the commits selected. Now a pull request to the master repository.

What if there are multiple branches on the master repository and your fork and you want to send a pull request from a particular branch of your fork to a branch in the master repository.

  • Create a clone of the master repository branch you are interested in
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git clone https://github.com/master-owner/project-repo -b interested-branch
  • Create a remote reference to the local repository of the your fork where all the commits are
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git remote add -t local-branch-name mylocalrepo /location/of/local/gitrepo
  • Do a fetch of all the changes available in the local repository from your fork
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git fetch mylocalrepo

  • Identify ids of all the commits you want to include into the pull request from your github fork.

  • Issue a git cherry-pick command to include the commits you want to get pulled

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git cherry-pick COMMIT-ID
  • Create a branch
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git branch cherry-branch
  • Switch to the new branch
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git checkout cherry-branch
  • Push the changes into your fork in github
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git push https://github.com/yourid/project-repo cherry-branch

  • Now the branch “cherry-branch” will be show up in github UI with the changes selected. A new pull request can be created for the changes to be committed into the master repository.

  • Once the changes are merged, the branch can be deleted and the local repository created can be removed.

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git push origin :cherry-branch

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