Move a Commit that was Committed on the Wrong Branch

We'll do some work and commit it - but then realize it was on the wrong branch!

To move a commit from one branch to another, we'll first git cherry-pick the commit we want, and then use git reset to remove the commit from the master branch.

Then we'll be able to manually delete the changes that we don't want on the master branch.

Using git branch shows us we have two branches, js-changes and master, and we are on master. We can write a second function in our app.js.

app.js

// our app js code

function helloWorld() {
  alert("Hi!")
}

function secondFunction() {
  alert("This is number 2")
}

After modifying, we add and commit it.

Terminal Input

git add -A
git commit -m "My second function"

However, after doing so, doing git branch shows us we made this commit on master branch and we meant to do it on the js-changes branch. git log --oneline shows us which commit we need to move from master to js-changes, but the problem is master is pointing to it. A lot of solutions to this involve git reset --hard, but beware because they can cause a loss of data.

What we want to do is switch to the js-changes branch with git checkout js-changes. Now, to get the function into it, we copy the commit hash and cherry pick that commit hash we want to move over with git cherry-pick {HASH}. Now, on the js-changes branch, we have the code we want and can push that with git push.

At this moment, our code on js-changes is correct, but master still contains that old commit, as cherry picking copies the commit but doesn't remove it. To switch master to be back at a previous commit, we do a git reset {HASH} to the commit we want to return to. An alternative to returning the hash would be making the it HEAD~1.

Now, git status shows app.js is still a modified file. However, after resetting we can git checkout app.js to reset it whatever it was at the hash we reset to. After entering that, git status shows app.js is not changed and git log --oneline shows the commit is gone. This approach is like manually doing a reset hard, but we can choose exactly what files we want to reset making it a safe and powerful option.

✏️ Edit on GitHub