Move develop changes to a new feature branch

Question

For my project I use git-flow. I have master and develop branch synchronized with remote-repo Usually for all changes I create a feature branch, edit the files, commit the changes on the feature branch and close the branch with a merge in develop.

But sometimes I forget to create a feature branch and I edit files directly in develop. How can I move the canges in a new feature branch?

Answer 1

If you've already made the commit to develop, and your history looks like this:

A---B---C---D develop

Here, C is the last correct commit on develop, and D should have been committed to a feature branch. Do the following (while on develop):

git branch feature      # creates feature branch pointing at D
git reset --hard C      # or HEAD^, HEAD~1, etc - resets develop back to C

This will result in:

A---B---C develop
         \
          D feature

This will also work well if you've made more than one commit, as you can substitute whichever commit reference you need to reset develop back to in the second command.

It's worth noting that reset --hard will discard any uncommitted changes. I would always advise only manipulating commit history with a clean working tree, but to avoid this you could use a different reset mode like --merge, which will allow the reset as long as your uncommitted changes aren't to any files changed in C...D.