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The Mixed Bag sequence teaches you various Git techniques and practical tips that don’t fit neatly into other categories, but are incredibly useful in day-to-day development.

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Overview

This sequence combines several important Git features that you’ll use regularly: grabbing specific commits, juggling commits to reorder them, creating tags for milestones, and using git describe to find your position in history.

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Levels in This Sequence

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1. Grabbing One Commit

What you’ll learn: How to isolate and move a single specific commit. Key concepts:
  • Sometimes you just need one commit from a branch
  • Use cherry-pick or rebase -i to grab specific commits
  • Useful when you made commits on the wrong branch
  • Helps keep commit history clean
Goal: Use cherry-pick or interactive rebase to move a specific commit. Example scenario: 
# You made a bug fix on the wrong branch
git checkout main
git cherry-pick C4  # Grab just the bug fix commit
Alternative approach: 
git rebase -i main  # Opens dialog to select commits
Cherry-pick is fastest when you know the commit hash. Interactive rebase is better when you need to visually select commits.

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2. Juggling Commits

What you’ll learn: How to reorder commits and make changes to earlier commits. Key concepts:
  • Sometimes you need to modify commits that aren’t the most recent
  • Use rebase -i to reorder commits
  • Can use --amend to modify the currently checked-out commit
  • Combine these techniques to edit commit history
Goal: Reorder commits and make changes to specific ones in the sequence. Example workflow: 
# Reorder to bring older commit to top
git rebase -i HEAD~3

# Make changes and amend
git commit --amend

# Reorder back
git rebase -i HEAD~3
This pattern is common when you realize you need to fix something in an earlier commit before continuing work.

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3. Juggling Commits #2

What you’ll learn: Advanced commit reordering with cherry-pick. Key concepts:
  • Cherry-pick can solve commit juggling problems
  • You can specify exact commit order
  • Useful when you know exactly what you want
  • Often cleaner than interactive rebase for simple reordering
Goal: Use cherry-pick to grab commits in a specific order. Example: 
# Want commits in order: C3, C1, C2
git cherry-pick C3
git cherry-pick C1  
git cherry-pick C2

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4. Git Tags

What you’ll learn: How to create permanent markers in your commit history. Key concepts:
  • Tags permanently mark specific commits as milestones
  • Unlike branches, tags never move
  • Used for releases, major milestones, etc.
  • You can checkout tags like commits (enters detached HEAD)
  • Can reference tags in other commands
Goal: Create tags at specific commits and checkout to a tag. Commands introduced: 
git tag <tag-name> <commit>  # Create a tag at a commit
git tag v1 C1                # Tag commit C1 as v1
git checkout <tag-name>      # Checkout to a tag
Example workflow: 
# Tag version releases
git tag v0 main~2  # Tag old commit as v0
git tag v1 side~1  # Tag another commit as v1

# Reference tags
git checkout v1    # Jump to version 1
git diff v0 v1     # Compare versions
Tags are perfect for marking releases like “v1.0”, “v2.0”, or milestones like “beta”, “production-release”.

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5. Git Describe

What you’ll learn: How to describe your position relative to the nearest tag. Key concepts:
  • git describe helps you see where you are in history
  • Output format: <nearest-tag>_<numCommits>_g<hash>
  • Shows closest tag, number of commits since tag, and abbreviated hash
  • Useful for versioning and understanding your location
Commands introduced: 
git describe <ref>  # Describe position of ref
Example output: 
git describe main
# Output: v1_2_gC5
# Meaning: 2 commits past tag v1, at commit starting with C5

git describe side  
# Output: v2_1_gC8
# Meaning: 1 commit past tag v2
Goal: Use git describe to understand your position relative to tags.
If there are no tags in your repository, git describe will fail. Always tag your releases!

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Common Patterns

Here are some practical scenarios where these techniques shine:

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Pattern 1: Fix a Commit in the Middle

# Bring old commit to top
git rebase -i HEAD~4

# Make your fix
git commit --amend

# Put everything back
git rebase -i HEAD~4

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Pattern 2: Mark and Find Releases

# Tag releases
git tag v1.0 main
git tag v2.0 develop

# Find your position  
git describe HEAD
# v2.0_3_gf6b2c1a (3 commits past v2.0)

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Pattern 3: Cherry-pick from Another Branch

# Grab specific commits from feature branch
git checkout main
git cherry-pick feature~2
git cherry-pick feature~1

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Commands Reference

CommandPurposeExample
git cherry-pick <commit>Copy specific commitsgit cherry-pick C2 C4
git rebase -i <location>Interactive reorder commitsgit rebase -i HEAD~3
git commit --amendModify the last commitgit commit --amend
git tag <name> <commit>Create a taggit tag v1 C1
git describe <ref>Describe positiongit describe main

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What’s Next?

After completing the Mixed Bag sequence:
  • Advanced Topics: Take on challenging rebase scenarios
  • Remote Repositories: Learn to collaborate using push, pull, and fetch
  • Remote Advanced: Master complex remote scenarios

Keep Learning

Continue with more advanced Git concepts

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