I started working on my master branch thinking that my task would be easy. After a while I realized it would take more work and I want to do all this work in a new branch.
How can I create a new branch and take all these changes with me without dirtying master?
If you hadn't made any commit yet, only (1: branch) and (3: checkout) would be enough.
Or, in one command: git checkout -b newBranch
As mentioned in the git reset
man page:
$ git branch topic/wip # (1)
$ git reset --hard HEAD~3 # (2) NOTE: use $git reset --soft HEAD~3 (explanation below)
$ git checkout topic/wip # (3)
master
" branch. You want to continue polishing them in a topic branch, so create "topic/wip
" branch off of the current HEAD
.master
branch to get rid of those three commits.topic/wip
" branch and keep working.Note: due to the "destructive" effect of a git reset --hard
command (it does resets the index and working tree. Any changes to tracked files in the working tree since <commit>
are discarded), I would rather go with:
$ git reset --soft HEAD~3 # (2)
This would make sure I'm not losing any private file (not added to the index).
The --soft
option won't touch the index file nor the working tree at all (but resets the head to <commit>
, just like all modes do).
With Git 2.23+, the new command git switch
would create the branch in one line (with the same kind of reset --hard
, so beware of its effect):
git switch -f -c topic/wip HEAD~3