git - Managing hotfixes when develop branch is very different from master?

Question

I'm using the "Git Flow" branching model, with a master branch and a develop branch. I'm working on a major new release, so my develop branch is wildly different from my master branch. This creates a problem anytime I need to make a hotfix on the master branch and merge it back into develop. There are almost always conflicts, and it's becoming a real pain.

What is the best way to manage this? It would be easier for me to make the small hotfix changes on develop manually and then merge everything into master when I'm ready without merging master back into develop. Is this possible?

Answer 1

The simplest way to get some commits from one branch to another is cherry-picking.

Assuming that your fix in master has the commit hash HASH and you want to take that hotfix into your devel branch, do a git checkout devel followed by a git cherry-pick HASH. That's it.

If you want to take all changes from master into devel, you can achieve that with

git checkout devel
git rebase master

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If you have the opposite scenario (you make a hotfix during development in a devel branch and want to take that fix into master before devel gets fully merged into master), the workflow is quite similar. Assuming that the hotfix has the hash HOTFIX_HASH, do this:

git checkout master
git cherry-pick HOTFIX_HASH

Now, the commit is present in master and devel. To get around this, type

git checkout devel
git rebase master

and the commit will disappear from devel since it's already present in master.