Introduction

When working on a project, sometimes you might need to merge a file or several files from one branch to another. In this post I will show you how you can do that.

How to merge select files

First, type git branch in the command prompt to find out what branch you are currently on and list what branches are available for the project you wish to carry out the merging in. In the example below, featureA is the branch that is currently selected:

$ git branch
  master
* featureA

Our goal is to merge files from the branch featureA into the master branch.

  1. We first switch to the master branch by typing git checkout master at the command prompt. If we type git branch once again we should see the following:

    $ git branch
    * master
    featureA
    
  2. Now, we merge the files that we want from the featureA branch into the master branch as follows:

    git checkout featureA src/app/components/subscription/subscription.component.ts src/app/components/subscription/subscription.component.html src/app/components/subscription/subscription.component.css
    
  3. We then type git status, which will show us the files that can be committed to the master branch:

    $ 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)
            new file:   src/app/components/subscription/subscription.component.ts
            new file:   src/app/components/subscription/subscription.component.html
            new file:   src/app/components/subscription/subscription.component.css
    
  4. Now, type git commit -m "Subscription component" or git commit if you want to type your commit message in a text editor.

  5. Once you are done with your commit message, you can then type git push to push your commit to the master branch.

Conclusion

The steps above are the simplest way that I have found in order to merge select files from one branch into another. I hope this blog post helps many developers who have tried to find a simple and easy way to merge select files from one branch into another in git.