Re: Newbie falls at first hurdle

From: Martin Langhoff <martin.langhoff@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 18, 2005, 19:06 UTC
Message-ID: <46a038f90509181206643bce7@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <200509181347.11403.alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk>

On 9/19/05, Alan Chandler <alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk> wrote:

> Still struggling with how to cherry pick parts a previous update (between
> possibly two other branches) and apply them to a current branch - all the
> tutorials assume you want it all, and I can't really understand what the
> cherry pick commands do from their manuals.

Forget the cherry pick commands -- here's a usable, easy strategy.

git-checkout the "source" branch, create a temporary directory to hold the patches, and call

    git-format-patch --mbox -o patchdir destbranch

This will create one file per patch in the destination directory. Feel free to delete patches you don't want, and edit the patches you've got there. Then switch to the destination branch, and use git-applymbox to merge them in.

If you do this repeatedly, git-format-patch will not reexport patches you've merged to the destination branch already (if they merged cleanly unchanged)... or at least that's the theory ;)

The only limitation I've found in this strategy is that it doesn't deal with binary objects. I'm lost as to what to do in those cases.

cheers,

martin