Ship only some paths from one git branch onto another

To move a subset of files (one feature's dirs) from a long-lived branch onto main without merging the rest: branch from origin/main, run git rm -rq --ignore-unmatch -- $P then git checkout origin/other -- $P, so files deleted upstream also go away. Verify with git diff --cached --quiet origin/other -- $P. In zsh, unquoted $P holding a space-separated string does NOT word-split, so the pathspec becomes one bogus path; define it as an array P=(a b c). Shared entry files that differ between branches (e.g. a router file) must be edited by hand, not checked out, or you drag in unrelated routes.