Copying minor updates to another branch with git

Question

I've started playing with git locally, and have come up against a use case that I'm not sure how best to handle.

I'm working on a spike in a branch, but then come across a simple correction that should also apply to master. The best I've found for the moment is:

git stash
git checkout master
//do my correction manually
git commit -a
git checkout spike
git pop

Seems a bit long winded, just for one line, and it involves me doing the same correction twice. I can't help feeling there must be a better way of doing this. In your answer, please also consider the case where there are other changes in the same file which I don't want to take.

Answer 1

If the change that you want to apply to master consists of one complete commit on the spike branch, then the cherry-pick command was made for this situation.

git stash
git checkout master
git cherry-pick <hash>
git checkout spike
git stash pop

If you just need part of the commit, then use:

git stash
git checkout master
git cherry-pick -n <hash>
# tinker with the index until it contains the changes that you want to apply to master
git commit
git checkout spike
git stash pop