How to move the last commit of a branch to the first commit of its featured branch and change the base of the featured branch

Question

here's my problem: I have this development branch which I am supposed to get my new branches from it. I took this branch named descendingOrder and committed and pushed everything I wanted to do. Then I had a totally different and new task. so when I was in descendingOrder I used the command git checkout -b featureTest and made a new branch. but I had two mistakes here:

1- My last commit on descendingOrder was supposed to be on the new branch feature test. but I mistakenly committed it on descendingOrder.

2- The feature test branch was supposed to be taken from the development branch. but I mistakenly took it from descendingOrder.

Now I want to move back the feature test to development and also add the last local commit of descendingOrder at the first of the new featured branch.

I also saw this link but it didn't help much.

Answer 1

There are multiple options which will all give you the same history eventually (with different commit hashes of course):

1. There was only a single commit on descendingOrder. Nothing to do with feature test, it already contains the commit as first commit. You can delete or move back descendingOrder by one commit: git branch -f descendingOrder descendingOrder^

2. There are already multiple commits on descendingOrder and feature test currently contains all of them. Rebase can help:

   git rebase --onto development 'feature test^' 'feature test'
   git branch -f descendingOrder descendingOrder^
   

   This will take the last commit of feature test copies it on top of development. Your feature test branch will then only contain this single commit (not in development). Afterwards, descendingOrder needs to be moved back one commit.

   If there are multiple commits on feature test that need to be rebased/moved, replace 'feature test^' with 'feature test~N' with N being the number of commits you want to copy.

   This option will work too if there was only a single commit on feature test, but it's more complicated than option 1.

3. Use cherry-pick:

   git checkout -B 'feature test' development
   git cherry-pick descendingOrder
   git branch -f descendingOrder descendingOrder^
   

   This first destroys and recreates your branch at the last commit of development, then copies the last commit of descendingOrder. Again, descendingOrder needs to be moved back.

4. Use an interactive rebase:

   git rebase -i development 'feature test'
   git branch -f descendingOrder descendingOrder^
   

   In the todo-list in the editor, remove all but the last commit (or the last N commits, if you want to keep multiple commits in the branch). After the rebase has complete, move back the descendingOrder branch.