How to cherry pick on a commit but only a few files from upstream patch

I forked a repository from upstream and there was a patch I like and I would like that patch goes into my forked repository. But at the same time, I would like to pick only a few changes, that is, not the whole commit and at the same time too, I need to make some minor modifications. So here goes how this is done.

Let's check where we are at now.

 jason@localhost:~/advanced-policy-firewall$ git branch  
 * master  
  rfxn_upstream  
  robertoberto-patch  
  support-ipv6  

Get the commit id from roberto patch, cherry pick the whole commit but do not commit yet.. just stage at the current branch (which is master)

 jason@localhost:~/advanced-policy-firewall$ git cherry-pick -n 0d1df6549820f9592aefb2353b77c52eadbe759f  
 Auto-merging files/vnet/vnetgen  
 CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in files/vnet/vnetgen  
 error: could not apply 0d1df65... - fixed vnetgen for newer linux distros to prioritize ip over ipconfig  
 hint: after resolving the conflicts, mark the corrected paths  
 hint: with 'git add <paths>' or 'git rm <paths>'  
 jason@localhost:~/advanced-policy-firewall$ git status .  
 On branch master  
 Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.  
 Changes to be committed:  
  (use "git restore --staged <file>..." to unstage)  
      modified:  README  
      new file:  test/distros_examples/ifconfig_ubuntu_12  
      new file:  test/distros_examples/ifconfig_ubuntu_20  
      new file:  test/distros_examples/ip_addr_ubuntu_12  
      new file:  test/distros_examples/ip_addr_ubuntu_20  
      new file:  test/distros_examples/ip_link_ubuntu_12  
      new file:  test/distros_examples/ip_link_ubuntu_20  
 Unmerged paths:  
  (use "git restore --staged <file>..." to unstage)  
  (use "git add <file>..." to mark resolution)  
      both modified:  files/vnet/vnetgen  

Let's get the diff of the stage file

 jason@localhost:~/advanced-policy-firewall$ git diff --cached README  
 diff --git a/README b/README  
 index 07ad004..0adf39d 100644  
 --- a/README  
 +++ b/README  
 @@ -199,7 +199,7 @@ Fedora Core Any  
  Slackware 8.0+  
  Debian GNU/Linux 3.0+  
  Suse Linux 8.1+  
 -Unbuntu Any  
 +Ubuntu Any  
  TurboLinux Server 9+  
  TurboLinux Fuji (Desktop)  
  RedHat Linux 7.3,8,9  

Unstage a file because I wanna make minor modification. After changes are make, add it back to the stage

 $ git restore --staged test/distros_examples/ip_link_ubuntu_12  
 $ vim test/distros_examples/ip_link_ubuntu_12  
 $ git add test/distros_examples/ip_link_ubuntu_12  

All good now, let's commit

 $ git commit -m "cherry pick but only selected files from roberto patched"  
 [master 80830c9] cherry pick but only selected files from roberto patched  
  8 files changed, 330 insertions(+), 28 deletions(-)  
  create mode 100644 test/distros_examples/ifconfig_ubuntu_12  
  create mode 100644 test/distros_examples/ifconfig_ubuntu_20  
  create mode 100644 test/distros_examples/ip_addr_ubuntu_12  
  create mode 100644 test/distros_examples/ip_addr_ubuntu_20  
  create mode 100644 test/distros_examples/ip_link_ubuntu_12  
  create mode 100644 test/distros_examples/ip_link_ubuntu_20  
 $ git branch  
 * master  
  rfxn_upstream  
  robertoberto-patch  
  support-ipv6  

and we push the changes to github

 $ git push  
 Enumerating objects: 19, done.  
 Counting objects: 100% (19/19), done.  
 Delta compression using up to 16 threads  
 Compressing objects: 100% (13/13), done.  
 Writing objects: 100% (14/14), 3.68 KiB | 3.68 MiB/s, done.  
 Total 14 (delta 7), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0  
 remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (7/7), completed with 4 local objects.  
 To https://github.com/jasonwee/advanced-policy-firewall.git  
   f98e9bb..80830c9 master -> master  

in case you want to see the final result, please visit this github commit.

Where to read branch work (or commits) in github?

Have you been stuck either of these situations:

• a lot of times, when you do your works on branch, and as days passed, you wanna review your own codes by browsing through the history but no idea how?


• or maybe you want to let you colleague take a look at the work you have done and code review for you?


• or see the changes you made in the branch and write a change log before you merge back into the master branch.

Today, we are going to learn just that.

With command line, you can use git log. LEAD-451 is an example of my branch and it is here for illustration purposes but you should change to the branch you want to view.

git log master...LEAD-451

this will show the changes including commit, author, date, message. If you notice, the order is chronological, with latest being to top and oldest at the bottom. You can use --reverse to see the oldest first.

If you want to see the file status, if you add --name-status to the command

.If you want to see the actual code changes, it is very intuitive, you use git diff. So

git diff master...LEAD-451

and you get a lengthy code different output between branch master and branch LEAD-451. If you want to generate a patch, you can give -p to the command. If you want to see what files change/add/delete between these two branches, you can add parameter --name-status or --name-only.

Enough for the command line, now we go for some visual representation. For this, I will illustrate using github.

With the same condition, in github, there is a feature called compare view.

https://github.com/Opentracker/luceneOnCassandra/compare/master...LEAD-451

As you can see on the bottom, the output is very much same with the command line we have tried before this. But github condense everything into one , very nice.

Assuming you are at your project landing page at github, how do you quickly get the compare view?

• at the front page, https://github.com/Opentracker/luceneOnCassandra/


• click on the branch drop down, select the branch you want to diff. example LEAD-451


• at the page https://github.com/Opentracker/luceneOnCassandra/tree/LEAD-451, you can click on the compare button.

 

That's it, I hope you learned something and please donate as a mean to continue funding this blog maintenance. Thank you.

how to push branch work to github and list unpushed git commit

Often time when we work on issue, we branch from master branch and started our development on the branch. However, if the branch work never published, your co developer cannot read the changes. In this article, we are going to learn how
to publish the branch work to github.

You should have familiar basic branch work in git. Example.

git branch my-branch-work
git checkout my-branch-work
// do develope work here until you are ready to merge to the master branch.
git checkout master
git merge my-branch-work

If your local branch has set to my-branch-work, if you are trying to pull down from github, you will get similar message below.

There is no tracking information for the current branch.
Please specify which branch you want to merge with.
See git-pull(1) for details

    git pull <remote> <branch>

If you wish to set tracking information for this branch you can do so with:

    git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/<branch> my-branch-work

That is when you should start to push your branch work to github.

jason@localhost:~$ git push -u origin my-branch-work
Username for 'https://github.com': xxxxxx
Password for 'https://xxxxxx@github.com':
Total 0 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
To https://github.com/organization/myproject.git
 * [new branch]      my-branch-work -> my-branch-work
Branch my-branch-work set up to track remote branch my-branch-work from origin.

Then make sure your local branch is also pointed to the correct branch

$ git branch
* my-branch-work
  master

The next time you do git pull, you will not receive the error. If you want to push your branch changes to github, you should use this command.

$ git push origin my-branch-work
Username for 'https://github.com': xxxxxx
Password for 'https://xxxxxx@github.com':
Counting objects: 10, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (7/7), done.
Writing objects: 100% (10/10), 2.73 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 10 (delta 3), reused 0 (delta 0)
To https://github.com/organization/myproject.git
   954be4a..5c1bcb6  my-branch-work -> my-branch-work

Often times, when you commit locally and you go on develop. Then probably pause for some period of time due to other priority works, and when you come back and do git status, you started to notice, hey, there is some local commit which you did not push but you forgotten what is actually in the commit. So is there a way to view it?

$ git status
On branch master
Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 2 commits.
(use "git push" to publish your local commits)

Yes, there is, you can use command like git log origin/master..HEAD

Some additional command which is helpful including viewing the different using command git diff origin/master..HEAD

That's it, I hope you like it and you can donate via our donation page. Thank you.

Learning git remote

Hello everybody! Today, we will take a look into git remote. So why git remote? Ever wonder why everytime when you push, you only have one command to push to? What if you want to push to a few servers? But before we push into a few servers, let's take a look what is git remote actually?

From git remote documentation

git-remote - Manage set of tracked repositories

So let's explain using examples. Below is my git repository, we check what we have in our current project.

$ git remote -v
origin	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (fetch)
origin	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (push)

Okay, so we have a remote repository named origin and its url for fetch and push, all clear, we are tracing the remote repository on github. As you may notice, origin didn't explain much though, other than said, oh yea, this is where it begin. What if you want to use a more descriptive term?

$ git remote rename origin github
$ git remote -v
github	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (fetch)
github	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (push)

okay, so now it is very descriptive, our remote repository is github. Now, what if I would like to push to another remote server? what then? Can I do it?

$ git remote add production https://production.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git
$ git remote -v
github	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (fetch)
github	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (push)
production	https://production.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (fetch)
production	https://production.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (push)

That's looks pretty easy. But over time, you may forget where is the branches set to.

$ git branch -r
  github/master

So it is currently pointing to github/master. If you want to remove local branches which in  remote branches has been removed, you can use git remote prune. Note that, following --dry-run won't actually remove but just show you which is going to be removed. If you are sure, just remove the parameter --dry-run.

$ git remote prune --dry-run github
$

To fetch updates for a named set of remote in the repository, execute using remote update

$ git remote -v update github
Fetching github
From https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud
 = [up to date]      master     -> github/master

To change a push url for a remote repository, and without --push, fetch url is changed.

$ git remote set-url --push production https://production1.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git
$ git remote -v
github	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (fetch)
github	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (push)
production	https://production.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (fetch)
production	https://production1.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (push)

$ git remote set-url production https://production2.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git
$ git remote -v
github	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (fetch)
github	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (push)
production	https://production2.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (fetch)
production	https://production1.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (push)

Though you can add more url for remote repositories, you can use set-url --add. If you notice, it won't be showing but you can check in .git/config to look at the url.

$ git remote set-url --add production https://production3.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git
$ git remote -v
github	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (fetch)
github	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (push)
production	https://production2.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (fetch)
production	https://production1.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (push)
$ git remote set-url --delete production https://production3.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git
$ git remote -v
github	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (fetch)
github	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (push)
production	https://production2.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (fetch)
production	https://production1.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (push)

Okay, because I don't host any remote production server, I will remove it.

$ git remote remove production
$ git remote -v
github	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (fetch)
github	https://github.com/jasonwee/videoOnCloud.git (push)