Git: move changes between branches without working directory change

Question

Use-case: every time I want to move commit from one git branch to another I perform the following sequence of actions:

• [commit into working branch]
• git checkout [branch-to-merge-into]
• git cherry-pick [target-commit]
• git push
• git checkout [working-branch]

That works fine with the only exception - every time I perform 'git checkout' git working directory content is changed (expected) and that causes my IDE (IntelliJ IDEA) to perform inner state update (because monitored file system sub-tree is modified externally). That really annoys especially in case of big number of small commits.

I see two ways to go:

• perform 'mass cherry picks', i.e. perform big number of commits; move them to another branch, say, at working day end;
• have a second local git repository and perform cherry picks on it, i.e. every time actual commit and push is performed to the working branch, go to that second repository, pull the changes and perform cherry pick there;

I don't like the first approach because its possible to forget to move particular commit. The second one looks a bit... unnatural.

Basically, it would be perfect if I could say git 'move this commit from branch with name branchX to the branch branchX+1' without working directory update.

Question: is it possible to perform the above?

Answer 1

If you do not need to often merge your changes, instead of doing cherry-pick, how about doing once in a while a git merge <working branch> from your <branch to merge into>? This would be the equivalent of cherry-pickling all the changes since the last time your merged, if I'm not mistaken (there is no risk for forgetting a commit, with this approach). This way, the "editor problem" would happen less often.

Answer 2

No, it is not possible to move a commit between branches without changing the working directory. This is because you will eventually run into a conflict, at which point git pauses so you can fix the conflict. If your working directly did not represent that state, then you would not be able to fix the conflicts correctly.

If you look around, you will find a lot of other possible solutions to this problem on SO, but the underlying issue sounds like that your editor does not handle the files being changed out from underneath it. This is basically a fact of using git. So, either update the editor or move to something more suited for a git workflow.