Git - Create a branch with current changes

Question

Hi all,

I started working on my master branch thinking that my task would be easy. After a while I realised it would take more work and I want to do all this work in a new branch.

So how can I create a new branch and take all these changes with me without dirtying master?

Thanks

Answer 1

as mentioned in the git reset man page:

$ git branch topic/wip     (1)
$ git reset --hard HEAD~3  (2)
$ git checkout topic/wip   (3)

1. You have made some commits, but realize they were premature to be in the "master" branch. You want to continue polishing them in a topic branch, so create "topic/wip" branch off of the current HEAD.
2. Rewind the master branch to get rid of those three commits.
3. Switch to "topic/wip" branch and keep working.

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Note: due to the "destructive" effect of a git reset --hard command (it does resets the index and working tree. Any changes to tracked files in the working tree since <commit> are discarded), I would rather go with a:

$ git reset --soft HEAD~3 (2)

, to make sure I'm not loosing any private file (not added to the index).
The --soft option won't touch the index file nor the working tree at all (but resets the head to <commit>, just like all modes do).

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Note bis, if you hadn't made any commit yet, only (1) and (3) would be enough!
(or, in one command: git checkout -b newBranch)

Answer 2

Since you haven't made any commits yet, you can save all your changes to the stash, create and switch to a new branch, then pop those changes back into your working tree:

git stash push
git checkout -b topic/newbranch
git stash pop