How to Move the Most Recent Commit(s) to a New Branch With Git?

Git offers powerful features for managing your codebase efficiently. Sometimes, you may find yourself needing to move the most recent commit(s) to a new branch in Git. This could be due to various reasons, such as realizing that changes were made on the wrong branch or wanting to isolate experimental work. Fortunately, Git provides simple ways to accomplish this task. In this article, we'll explore how to move the most recent commit(s) to a new branch with Git.

Why Move Commits to a New Branch?

Before diving into the steps, let's briefly discuss why you might want to move commits to a new branch:

1. Correcting Mistakes: You may have accidentally committed changes to the wrong branch and need to move them to the correct one.
2. Isolating Changes: You might start working on a feature and realize it's better suited as a separate branch for better organization and testing.
3. Collaborative Workflow: Moving commits can help maintain a clean and organized workflow, especially in collaborative environments where each branch represents a specific task or feature.

Some terminological commands to do the task:

• HEAD: Head pointer is the pointer that points to the most recent commit, which is reflected in the working tree. It stands for the currently checked out commit we're working on.
• git commit -m <message>: The current contents or changes in the repository are recorded through git committing. After git add  command, all the updated files reach the staging area, after which git commit fetch the changes to the repository with the commit message.
• git branch <branch>: This command creates a new branch. This branch is nothing but a pointer to the snapshot of our changes from our main repository.
• Relative references: Specifying commits by their hashes is a tedious job. So we use relative commits. One of them is ^ which means moving upwards one commit and ~<num> means moving upwards a number of times.
• git hard reset to head: The purpose of the 'git reset' command is to move the current head to the commit specified. The --hard  option is used in order to reset the files of the index or the staging area and the changes in those files are lost, thus untracking them.
• git checkout <branch>: The Git checkout command lets us navigate between the branches created by git branch. Checking out a branch updates the files in the working directory to match the version stored in that branch.

Steps to Move Recent Commits to a New Branch

Step 1: Check Current Status

Before making any changes, it's a good practice to check the current status of your repository. Open your terminal or command prompt and navigate to the repository where you want to move the commits. Use the following command to view the current status:

git status

Step 2: Create a New Branch

Next, create a new branch where you want to move the recent commit(s). Use the following command to create a new branch and switch to it:

git checkout -b new-branch-name

Replace new-branch-name with the desired name for your new branch.

Step 3: Move the Commits

Now, let's move the most recent commit(s) to the newly created branch. There are a couple of ways to achieve this, depending on whether you want to move just the most recent commit or multiple recent commits.

Moving the Most Recent Commit

If you only need to move the most recent commit, you can use the git reset command. Switch back to the original branch:

git checkout original-branch-name

Then, use the following command to reset the original branch to the previous commit, effectively removing the latest commit from this branch:

git reset --hard HEAD~1

Now, switch back to the new branch:

git checkout new-branch-name

And cherry-pick the removed commit onto the new branch:

git cherry-pick original-branch-name

Moving Multiple Recent Commits

If you need to move more than one recent commit, you can adjust the reset command to match the number of commits. For example, to move the last three commits:

git checkout original-branch-name
git reset --hard HEAD~3
git checkout new-branch-name
git cherry-pick original-branch-name..HEAD@{1}

In this command, HEAD~3 indicates the last three commits, and HEAD@{1} refers to the state of the branch before the reset.

Step 4: Verify Changes

After moving the commits, it's essential to verify that everything is in order. Use the git log command on both branches to ensure the commits have been moved correctly:

git log

Check the log for both the original and new branches to confirm the commits are where they should be.