performing a transplant with patch

if you are not able to save the branches as in the Multi-Branch Git-Commit-Ectomy Method, you can still save the changes that a particular set of commits made to a particular file or set of files using the patch utility together with git.

creating patches with git

git has the ability to create patches two ways.

The first way is using git format-patch, which creates one patch per commit. This method preserves meta-information about the commit and is useful for transerring changes one commit at a time.

The second way is using git diff --patch, which simply outputs the difference between the two commits, without any meta-information.

We cover the latter method, since it is more general and can apply to ranges of commits.

branch to branch

Suppose you have some changes to the code that live in a separate branch, and you wish to save those changes for later (after the git-commit-ectomy is finished).

For example:

                   B   master
A  o---o---o---o---o
    \
     \
      o---o---o---o 
                  C   feature_branch

To create a patch from the feature branch, it is best to run git diff to get the diff between the two branches, B and C, rather than the diff between the feature branch and the original commit, A and C.

To produce the patch:

git diff --patch feature_branch master > make_feature_branch.patch

Note that this will not output diff information for binary files.

To apply the patch, use the git am command (note, of all the git subcommand,s this subcommand has the absolute worst name imaginable):

git am < make_feature_branch.patch 

Alternatively, it is recommended that you keep the patch in cold storage, and only apply it to the master branch when the git commit ectomy is finished.