Can I interactively pick hunks from another git commit?

Question

I'm looking for exactly the same behavior as

git add -i -p 

But instead of composing a commit from my working directory, I'd like to compose my working directory from (parts of) a commit. How can I do that ?

My use case is that I have several distinct features that are grouped together in a single commit and I'd like to test them one by one

Using cherry-pick -n is not really satisfactory, since it leaves me with the dirty job of removing all the unrequired code. I'd really just like to pick the selected changes I want to test.

Answer 1

Using cherry-pick -n is not really satisfactory, since it leaves me with the dirty job of removing all the unrequired code. I'd really just like to pick the selected changes I want to test.

The job may have been a dirty one before, but with the advent of git checkout --patch, you can now selectively discard changes, similar to git add -p for adding.

Answer 2

You could use git reset --mixed HEAD^1 to revert the index, then pick the hunks you want with git add -i.

The reset will roll back the index to the previous commit (essentially un-committing whatever was the HEAD), but it won't touch the working tree. You can now stage the hunks you want, commit them and throw away the rest with a git reset --hard HEAD.