Question

I want to remove an in-between merge (remove, not squash) and then move the last 2 commits to a new branch.

This is my current git log --graph:

* 3a5c453 - (2 hours ago) last commit (HEAD, master)
*   b6c19f1 - (2 hours ago) Merge branch 'tade' into HEAD
|\  
* | be356d0 - (2 hours ago) previous commit
| * 65328dc - (3 hours ago) some other commit in branch tade

I want to end up with this:

    * bbbbbbb - (some time in the future) a later commit on tade (tade)
*   | aaaaaaa - (some time in the future) a later commit on master (master)
| * | 3a5c453 - (2 hours ago) last commit (HEAD, newone)
| * | be356d0 - (2 hours ago) previous commit
|/  |
|   * 65328dc - (3 hours ago) some other commit in branch tade

I thought of using git rebase -i to remove the merge with the branch tade and then do a git branch newone and git reset --hard HEAD^2 to move the last 2 commits to the new branch. When I did the rebase though, it showed me all the commits from the tade branch that got merged into master and | was reluctant in deleting them.

Is there a better way or should I go ahead with it?

EDIT: I updated the intended state graph to make it more clear. The 2 new commit (aaaaaaa and bbbbbbb) are only there to illustrate the state a little better (I hope)

Answer 1

Use interactive rebasing to rebase 3a5c453 on be356d0 instead of the merge commit b6c19f1 (i.e. just move the 3a5c453 commit one down). Then you should have something like this:

*   xxxxxxx - (2 hours ago) Merge branch 'tade' into HEAD
|\  
* | yyyyyyy - (2 hours ago) last commit (HEAD)
* | be356d0 - (2 hours ago) previous commit
| * 65328dc - (3 hours ago) some other commit in branch tade

Then you can just create new branches:

git checkout -b newbranch yyyyyy

Then you can delete xxxxxx and commit something to the master and end up with this:

* zzzzzz - new commit on master
| * | yyyyyyy - (2 hours ago) last commit (HEAD)
| * | be356d0 - (2 hours ago) previous commit
| | * 65328dc - (3 hours ago) some other commit in branch tade