threads / discuss / 18705

How to merge in different order?

Subject: How to merge in different order?

## tl;dr

4 messages between Apr 3, 2009 and Apr 3, 2009.

replies: 3people: 3as markdown or json

Josef Wolf· Apr 3, 2009, 16:12 UTC · lore
Hello,
Given a branch that looks like
  A1  A2  A3  A4  A5
I would like to merge into another branch in the order
  A1  A3  A4  A2  A5

When I merge A3, then A2 is merged also. git-merge don't seem to have an option to omit slurping older commits?

Peter Harris· Apr 3, 2009, 16:30 UTC · re: Josef Wolf · lore

Re: How to merge in different order?

On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 12:12 PM, Josef Wolf wrote:
Show 12 quoted lines
> Hello,
>
> Given a branch that looks like
>
>  A1  A2  A3  A4  A5
>
> I would like to merge into another branch in the order
>
>  A1  A3  A4  A2  A5
>
> When I merge A3, then A2 is merged also.  git-merge don't seem
> to have an option to omit slurping older commits?

"git merge" merges the entire branch. It sounds like you are looking for "git cherry-pick" instead.

Alternatively, you could run "git rebase -i A1" on the branch before merging it. (See the docs for details)

Peter Harris
Jeff King· Apr 3, 2009, 16:31 UTC · re: Josef Wolf · lore

Re: How to merge in different order?

On Fri, Apr 03, 2009 at 06:12:08PM +0200, Josef Wolf wrote:
Show 10 quoted lines
> Given a branch that looks like
> 
>   A1  A2  A3  A4  A5
> 
> I would like to merge into another branch in the order
> 
>   A1  A3  A4  A2  A5
> 
> When I merge A3, then A2 is merged also.  git-merge don't seem
> to have an option to omit slurping older commits?

Right. Remember that git represents history as a directed graph, so a merge is really just another commit saying "I include all history leading up to these two commits". There is no way to say "I include the history leading up to these commits, minus some other commits".

If you just want to throw away A2, you can "git revert" it, then merge.

But what you probably want to do is rewrite the history of your branch to re-order the commits. You can do this with "git rebase -i". Like any history rewriting, this can cause difficulties for people who you have already shared the branch with (because it will replace the commits that they already have with 5 _new_ commits that just happen to do more or less the same thing).

If you have already shared the branch, you may just want to cherry-pick the changes you want (using "git cherry-pick") onto your other branch.

-Peff
Josef Wolf· Apr 3, 2009, 17:59 UTC · re: Jeff King · lore

Re: How to merge in different order?

On Fri, Apr 03, 2009 at 12:31:50PM -0400, Jeff King wrote:
[ ... ]
> But what you probably want to do is rewrite the history of your branch
> to re-order the commits.

Yeah, That's exactly what I need. But I guess there's a lot of work ahead: about 2500 commits are waiting for the sort.

> You can do this with "git rebase -i".
Sounds good
Show 5 quoted lines
> Like any
> history rewriting, this can cause difficulties for people who you have
> already shared the branch with (because it will replace the commits that
> they already have with 5 _new_ commits that just happen to do more or
> less the same thing).

This is a copy of a svn repository, created with git-svn. So the branch is shared with other people.

> If you have already shared the branch, you may just want to cherry-pick
> the changes you want (using "git cherry-pick") onto your other branch.
Argh, I was looking for git-cherry, but that does something different ;-)
Thanks for the answer, Jeff!

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