Azure Git: How not to select some files for merge

Question

I am working with Azure DevOps Git. I have a repo with 2 branches Development and Release. I made 5 changes in Release branch, all in different folders, all in different commits. Now I need to merge only 3 of those changes to Development branch i.e. 2 of those changes should not be merged into Development branch. How can I do that?

In Azure web page, I went to my repo, click on Pull requests link to open it, then click on New Pull request button to start creating new Pull request. Then for source branch I select Release branch, and for target branch I select Development branch. Its Files tab shows 5 files. But I dont see any option to not select any of them.

Are those changes in a single commit or as different commits? — Pranav Singh, Jul 14 '20 at 02:43
Can you explain the role of the two files that you want to exclude ? Do you know that you will *never ever* want those changes in your `Development` branch ? or do you want to exclude them now, but will need them in the future ? — LeGEC, Jul 14 '20 at 12:45
@LeGEC I will never ever want those changes in Development branch — ChumboChappati, Jul 14 '20 at 14:32
Agree with LeGEC, since you ever ever want these changes in `Development`, we could revert those two specific changes. You can also revert it in the Azure devops UI instead of git command. — Leo Liu, Jul 15 '20 at 02:32

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 14 '20 at 03:58

The comment from Pranav Singh would be the best option, cherry-picking. When you create a PR you are merging one branch into another. If you are only wanting to merge part of the changes I would make a new branch based off the default branch and then cherry-pick the changes into that new branch. You do not want to cherry-pick from one branch into the default branch as that defeats the purpose of a PR.

https://git-scm.com/docs/git-cherry-pick The raw git manual is a great resource but sometimes hard to read through.

Sometimes it is easier to read here https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/cherry-pick

I would say also then make sure to merge or rebase the default branch into the original branch (where you cherry-picked from) once you complete the PR. This way if it causes any Merge conflicts you can address them sooner than later.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 14 '20 at 14:47

If you never ever want these changes in Development, you can revert those two specific changes, and merge that in Development :

in your local repo :

from the Release branch
create a new branch (choose a name, I will call it wip)

on this branch, revert the two commits you want to skip :

 git revert <hash of commit1>
 git revert <hash of commit2>

push this branch to devops :
```
 git push -u origin wip
```

on DevOps :

create a new Merge Request, asking to merge wip into Development

Azure Git: How not to select some files for merge

2 Answers2