Oh my patch! Juggling git commands

When Git Saved My Day (Again)

TL;DR

Sometimes you can’t just cherry-pick a commit from one repo into another. That’s where the dynamic duo of:

git format-patch -1 <my-branch>
git am my.patch

comes in. You can turn any commit into a portable patch file and apply it somewhere else like magic. It saved me hours of pain—and reminded me (again) how deep Git’s toolbox really is.

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The Setup: Two Repos, One Problem

I had Repo A, a working project with a nice little commit that solved a tricky bug. Then I had Repo B, a close sibling project that desperately needed the same fix.

Naturally, my first instinct was:

git cherry-pick <commit>

But nope. Repo B was a replica, not a direct fork. Different history, different commit hashes—Git looked at me like I was asking it to solve world peace.

I thought: Great, time to manually copy-paste code and hope I don’t miss anything.

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The Breakthrough: Patching Like a Pro

Then I remembered something lurking deep in my Git memory:

git format-patch -1 <commit-hash>

This command takes a commit and turns it into a neat little .patch file. It’s literally a portable bundle of changes, complete with metadata (author, commit message, diff).

So in Repo A I did:

git format-patch -1 <commit-hash>

Boom. I had 0001-my-fix.patch sitting in my directory.

Now over in Repo B, all I had to do was:

git am 0001-my-fix.patch

And just like that, the commit was applied—message, author, changes, everything. No retyping, no manual edits, no cherry-pick headaches.

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The Time Saved

What would’ve been a messy half-hour of diffing and code-shuffling turned into a two-command solution.

• No rewriting the commit message.
• No hunting down which files changed.
• No accidental omissions.

I saved myself tons of time and (even better) avoided introducing new bugs just from human error.

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Why This Still Amazes Me

Every time I think I “know Git,” it humbles me with a hidden feature that feels like a superpower.

• git cherry-pick for moving commits within a shared history.
• git format-patch + git am for moving commits across disconnected repos.

Different problems, different tools—but all baked right into Git.

Honestly, I walked away from that problem once again amazed at just how much Git can do. Yes, it’s quirky, sometimes cryptic, and often intimidating—but when you need it most, Git delivers.

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👉 Next time you’re stuck trying to transfer a commit across repo universes, don’t panic. Just patch it up.

git format-patch -1 <commit-hash>
git am 0001-my-fix.patch

Git: still blowing my mind after all these years.