How do I merge my local uncommitted changes into another Git branch?

Question

How can I do the following in Git?

My current branch is branch1 and I have made some local changes. However, I now realize that I actually meant to be applying these changes to branch2. Is there a way to apply/merge these changes so that they become local changes on branch2 without committing them on branch1?

Answer 1

Since your files are not yet committed in branch1:

git stash git checkout branch2 git stash pop 

or

git stash git checkout branch2 git stash list       # to check the various stash made in different branch git stash apply x    # to select the right one 

Above is the longer more explicit version of rbento's answer:

git stash git stash branch branch2 

It uses:

git stash branch <branchname> [<stash>]

• Creates and checks out a new branch named <branchname> starting from the commit at which the <stash> was originally created,
• applies the changes recorded in <stash> to the new working tree and index.

If that succeeds, and <stash> is a reference of the form stash@{<revision>}, it then drops the <stash>.

This is useful if the branch on which you ran git stash push has changed enough that git stash apply fails due to conflicts.
Since the stash entry is applied on top of the commit that was HEAD at the time git stash was run, it restores the originally stashed state with no conflicts.

---

As commented by benjohn (see git stash man page):

To also stash currently untracked (newly added) files, add the argument -u, so:

git stash -u 

Answer 2

Stashing, temporary commits and rebasing may all be overkill. If you haven't added the changed files to the index, yet, then you may be able to just checkout the other branch.

git checkout branch2 

This will work so long as no files that you are editing are different between branch1 and branch2. It will leave you on branch2 with you working changes preserved. If they are different then you can specify that you want to merge your local changes with the changes introduced by switching branches with the -m option to checkout.

git checkout -m branch2 

If you've added changes to the index then you'll want to undo these changes with a reset first. (This will preserve your working copy, it will just remove the staged changes.)

git reset