Pull Request, ignore some file changes

Question

When I do a Pull Request on GitHub (against master branch), can we ignore some file changes, like

we have one file named 'fileA' in branch 'release', and we have the same file in 'master', but we do some changes in 'fileA' in branch 'release'
when we do a Pull Request, is there any way we can ignore the changes in 'fileA', do not let that merge into 'master'.

No. Create branch without modifications of fileA – Alexey Ten Feb 24 '15 at 18:37 — Alexey Ten, Feb 24 '15 at 18:37

score 22 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 24 '15 at 18:37

You can't ignore some files from a pull request selectively. Two workarounds for this can be -

First -

Second -

Any of this method will work. Which will be easier depends upon how many files are to be included / excluded.

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 29 '20 at 15:30

As mentioned in https://stackoverflow.com/a/28703636/12138397, it is not possible to exclude files in a Pull-Request, and the alternatives which have been proposed also work.

But there is a simpler solution to it. Here I am considering staging as my target and dev as my source

root
|-- src
|   -- app.py
|-- .gitignore
|-- settings.py
|-- requirements.txt

Let's say, I would want to ignore the settings.py file from being merged

First move to the target branch (the branch to which you want to merge the changes)
```
git checkout staging
```
Then you can use the git checkout command to selective pick the files you want to merge
```
git checkout dev src/
```
This will only merge the files changed inside src/ folder

NOTE: You can also do it selectively for each file.
Then push to remote repository
```
git push origin staging
```

But this solution is useful only if the files to be excluded is small.

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

3

Create branch with last commit you agree with:

git branch my-branch <sha>
git checkout my-branch

Select commits you want to pull request as patches:

git format-patch -10 <sha> --stdout > 0001-last-10-commits.patch

Apply patches:

git am < 0001-last-10-commits.patch

Your commits will be as they was. You can git push -u origin my-branch immediately.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

Community

answered Oct 14 '16 at 15:46

hlcs

3 Answers3