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Suppose I have this feature branch "foo". Now I want to merge it back into master, but I've added some debugging code that I don't want in master.

The debug code is in it's own commit, so I could use git cherry-pick on each commit and leave out this commit. But that's gonna be quite tiresome.

Is there some "inverse cherry-pick" that does this? or an interactive merge?

How can I do this in an easy way?

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4 Answers

up vote 23 down vote accepted

Use interactive rebase:


That will open something like this in your $EDITOR:

    pick 8ac4783 folders and folders
    pick cf8b1f5 minor refactor
    pick 762b37a Lots of improvement. Folders adn shit.
    pick 3fae6e1 Be ready to tableview
    pick b174dc0 replace folder collection view w/ table view
    pick ef1b65b more finish
    pick ecc407f responder chain and whatnot
    pick 080a847 play/pause video
    pick 6719000 wip: movie fader
    pick c5f2933 presentation window fade transition

    # Rebase e6f77c8..c5f2933 onto e6f77c8
    # Commands:
    #  p, pick = use commit
    #  e, edit = use commit, but stop for amending

So what you do is simply to remove the line containing the debug commit, write the file and close your editor, and git will tell you something along the lines of:

Successfully rebased and updated refs/heads/master.

Now you can just merge in that branch to master.

UPDATE: It should be noted that altering history with rebase should only happen on private branches. If this branch has been exposed to the public, use git revert as proposed by other answerer.

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That's what I would do :) –  Mike Mazur Oct 26 '09 at 13:19
Nice.. and is there a nice way to get the SHA-OF-FIRST-COMMIT-IN-BRANCH? –  Dave Vogt Oct 26 '09 at 13:30
There probably are, but I haven't found it yet. –  Harry Vangberg Oct 27 '09 at 13:02
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Despite what other SCMs use it to mean, in git, git revert is an inverse cherry-pick.

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git revert does record a new commit with the appropriate changes removed. –  Mike Mazur Oct 26 '09 at 13:20
@mikem: which is, I think, what an inverse cherry-pick intuitively means. Both revert and cherry-pick also have a -n option which doesn't perform a commit but leaves the changes in the cache/index/staging area so the commands are very similar. –  Charles Bailey Oct 26 '09 at 13:23
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Another idea is to add the reverted commit of the one with debug code and to merge it into your master branch. Afterwards we remove that extra commit in the foo branch.

git checkout foo

git checkout master
git merge foo

git checkout foo
git reset --hard HEAD~1

Make sure your working tree is clean. First create the reverted commit. Then merge it into master. Afterwards reset the branch pointer of the foo branch to the parent of the reverted commit, so it's back in its original state.

If you dislike using git reset then you could create a temporary branch where you create the reverted commit. At the end you delete the temporary branch.

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Use interactive rebase to remove the commits which you do not want.

On a new branch "foo-merge" created from "foo":

git rebase -i master

Once you are in commit edit mode, remove the lines containing the debug commits, save, and quit from the editor.

After rebasing, simply pull foo-merge into master:

git checkout master
git pull . foo-merge
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Repeating much? –  Harry Vangberg Oct 27 '09 at 13:02
A little difficult to contribute via comments when you're not allowed to. FWIW, I did vote up your answer before deciding that mine would be different enough to be a separate entry, then filing it. –  Yang Zhao Oct 28 '09 at 22:55
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