Creating a git branch for previous commits: what's the best way to do it?

Imagine the following:

• A bunch of related commits are done on a 'development' branch
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• These commits should have actually been done to a 'feature_x' branch
• The 'feature_x' branch should be merged into the 'development' branch

Graphed example:

Current situation:

development (HEAD) A--B--C--D--E

Desired situation:

development         A--B
                        \
feature_x                C--D--E 

How do I create this feature branch, group these previous commits into the branch, and make the 'development' branch look like no individual commits have been done to it?

You don't really need much to to that:

git checkout devel
git checkout -b feature_x
# now devel and feature_x refer to commit E
git branch -f devel <hash of commit B>
# now you're still on feature_x, but devel is at commit B

A--B--C--D--E(dev branch)
\
 \
   F--G(feature branch)

I assume you want to become like this

A--(dev branch)
\
 \
   F--G--B--C--D--E(feature branch)

You can use git rebase to do this

on the HEAD of dev branch create a temp branch for rebasing purpose

git branch temp
git rebase feature_branch

move your devbranch to commit A

git checkout dev_branch
git reset --hard <shasum of A>

move your feature branch to commit E and delete temp branch

git checkout feature_branch
git reset --hard <shasum of E>
git branch -D temp