how do you push only some of your local git commits?

Question

Suppose I have 5 local commits. I want to push only 2 of them to a centralized repo (using an SVN-style workflow). How do I do this?

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Answer 1

By default, git-push pushes all branches. When you do this:

 git checkout HEAD~3  #set head to three commits ago
 git push #attempt push from that head

You move to a detached HEAD (you're not on any branch) and then you push all the branches, including the local master (which is still where it was) to the remote master.

The manual solution is:

 git push origin HEAD:master

If you find the default behaviour of pushing all branches confusing (and dangerous!), add this to your ~/.gitconfig:

 [remote.origin]
    push = HEAD

Then only the branch you're on is pushed. In your example (a detached head), you would have got this error message, rather than accidentally pushing the wrong commits:

 error: unable to push to unqualified destination: HEAD