Prevent local changes getting pushed in Git

Question

I have cloned a repository and the master branch in my repo is tracking origin/master. I created a work branch and changed some config

Answer 1

One way to solve this is to "cherry-pick" each change from your work branch into master before you push upstream. I've used a technique where I include a word like NOCOMMIT into the commit message for local changes only, and then use a shell script something like this:

#!/bin/sh

BRANCH=`git branch | grep ^\\* | cut -d' ' -f2`
if [ $BRANCH != "master" ]; then
  echo "$0: Current branch is not master"
  exit 1
fi

git log --pretty=oneline work...master | grep -v -E '(NOCOMMIT|DEBUG):' | cut -d' ' -f1 | tac | xargs -l git cherry-pick

This cherry-picks each change that is not marked with NOCOMMIT (or DEBUG) into the master branch.