I have two branches, X and Y, and I want to cherry-pick a bunch of commits from Y to X, say, C..F, H, M. I can achieve this with:

git switch X
git log Y
# Look up commits of interest
git cherry-pick C..F H M

However, looking up and copy-pasting the commit hashes of interest is cumbersome. I'd prefer Git to present me with a list of candidate commits (hashes and messages) from which I can simply select the ones I want to pick.

git rebase -i provides just such a list, and this seems to achieve what I want (source):

# Checkout a new temporary branch at the current location
git checkout -b tmp

# Move the integration branch to the head of the new patchset
git branch -f integration last_SHA-1_of_working_branch_range

# Rebase the patchset onto tmp, the old location of integration
git rebase --onto tmp first_SHA-1_of_working_branch_range~1 integration

However, having to create and later clean up a temporary branch makes this similarly cumbersome ans hand-picking the hashes of interest. Is there a simpler way to do such an "interactive cherry-pick"?

I have two branches, X and Y, and I want to cherry-pick a bunch of commits from Y to X, say, C..F, H, M. I can achieve this with:

git switch X
git log Y
# Look up commits of interest
git cherry-pick C..F H M

However, looking up and copy-pasting the commit hashes of interest is cumbersome. I'd prefer Git to present me with a list of candidate commits (hashes and messages) from which I can simply select the ones I want to pick.

git rebase -i provides just such a list, and this seems to achieve what I want (source):

# Checkout a new temporary branch at the current location
git checkout -b tmp

# Move the integration branch to the head of the new patchset
git branch -f integration last_SHA-1_of_working_branch_range

# Rebase the patchset onto tmp, the old location of integration
git rebase --onto tmp first_SHA-1_of_working_branch_range~1 integration

However, having to create and later clean up a temporary branch makes this similarly cumbersome ans hand-picking the hashes of interest. Is there a simpler way to do such an "interactive cherry-pick"?

• git
• git-rebase
• git-cherry-pick
• git-interactive-rebase

Share Improve this question Follow asked Mar 6 at 15:02 flotzillaflotzilla 1,25611 gold badge1515 silver badges2424 bronze badges 2

• 2 You don't need temporary branches. You can work with detached HEAD and git rebase -i. – j6t Commented Mar 6 at 15:11
• +1 for git rebase -i does the job. "Cleaning up the temp branch" is really a noop here, if you care to describe the issue you see on that point someone will probably help you write the script or alias to do it quickly. – LeGEC Commented Mar 6 at 15:34

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1 Answer 1

Sorted by: Reset to default 1

Making @j6t's comment concrete:

git rebase -i @ Y^0    # `Y^0` rather than `Y` to skip the label and get just the commits
git checkout -B X @    # re-hang the `X` label on the new tip and attach i.e. check it out.