GIT-CHERRY-PICK(1)

📦
version 2.56.0 · 25 versions
, in arch rolling

💅 GIT-CHERRY-PICK(1) 💅

okay bestie, so this is from the Git Manual and honestly it's giving "I want THAT commit but on MY branch" energy and we're obsessed 🍒✨

✨ NAME ✨

git-cherry-pick — apply the changes introduced by some existing commits. literally picking cherries off one branch and dropping them onto another, slay 🍒

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

git cherry-pick [--edit] [-n] [-m <parent-number>] [-s] [-x] [--ff]
                  [-S[<keyid>]] <commit>...
git cherry-pick (--continue | --skip | --abort | --quit)

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So picture this: you give it one or more existing commits, and it applies the change each one introduces, recording a brand new commit for each. main character behavior fr fr. 💅

lowkey important: this requires your working tree to be clean (no modifications from the HEAD commit). no cap.

When it's not obvious how to apply a change, here's the whole dramatic sequence that goes down:

  1. The current branch and HEAD pointer stay at the last commit successfully made.
  2. The CHERRY_PICK_HEAD ref is set to point at the commit that introduced the change that is difficult to apply — unless the --no-commit option was given.
  3. Paths in which the change applied cleanly are updated both in the index file and in your working tree.
  4. For conflicting paths, the index file records up to three versions, as described in the "TRUE MERGE" section of git-merge(1). The working tree files will include a description of the conflict bracketed by the usual conflict markers <<<<<<< and >>>>>>>.
  5. No other modifications are made.

See git-merge(1) for some hints on resolving such conflicts. you got this 🫶

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • <commit>... — the commits to cherry-pick. For a more complete list of ways to spell commits, see gitrevisions(7). Sets of commits can be passed but no traversal is done by default, as if the --no-walk option was specified, see git-rev-list(1). Note that specifying a range will feed all <commit>... arguments to a single revision walk (see a later example that uses maint master..next). iykyk 🌈
  • -e, --edit — with this option, git cherry-pick will let you edit the commit message prior to committing. your words, your vibe 💖
  • --cleanup=<mode> — this option determines how the commit message will be cleaned up before being passed on to the commit machinery. See git-commit(1) for more details. In particular, if the <mode> is given a value of scissors, scissors will be appended to MERGE_MSG before being passed on in the case of a conflict. ✂️ iconic honestly
  • -x — when recording the commit, append a line that says "(cherry picked from commit ...)" to the original commit message in order to indicate which commit this change was cherry-picked from. This is done only for cherry picks without conflicts. Do not use this option if you are cherry-picking from your private branch because the information is useless to the recipient. If on the other hand you are cherry-picking between two publicly visible branches (e.g. backporting a fix to a maintenance branch for an older release from a development branch), adding this information can be useful. receipt-keeping behavior ngl 🧾
  • -r — it used to be that the command defaulted to do -x described above, and -r was to disable it. Now the default is not to do -x so this option is a no-op. 💀 rip bozo
  • -m <parent-number>, --mainline <parent-number> — usually you cannot cherry-pick a merge because you do not know which side of the merge should be considered the mainline. This option specifies the parent number (starting from 1) of the mainline and allows cherry-pick to replay the change relative to the specified parent. pick a side bestie 👑
  • -n, --no-commit — usually the command automatically creates a sequence of commits. This flag applies the changes necessary to cherry-pick each named commit to your working tree and the index, without making any commit. In addition, when this option is used, your index does not have to match the HEAD commit. The cherry-pick is done against the beginning state of your index.

This is useful when cherry-picking more than one commits' effect to your index in a row.

This option does not record CHERRY_PICK_HEAD, so a plain git commit afterwards records you as the author. That is by design: what you are building is your own work, which you keep changing before committing, rather than a reproduction of the original commit. main character energy for real 🫶✨
  • -s, --signoff — add a Signed-off-by trailer at the end of the commit message. See the signoff option in git-commit(1) for more information.
  • -S[<keyid>], --gpg-sign[=<keyid>], --no-gpg-sign — GPG-sign commits. The keyid argument is optional and defaults to the committer identity; if specified, it must be stuck to the option without a space. --no-gpg-sign is useful to countermand both commit.gpgSign configuration variable, and earlier --gpg-sign. 🔐 secure the bag
  • --ff — if the current HEAD is the same as the parent of the cherry-pick'ed commit, then a fast forward to this commit will be performed. zoom zoom ⚡
  • --allow-empty — by default, cherry-picking an empty commit will fail, indicating that an explicit invocation of git commit --allow-empty is required. This option overrides that behavior, allowing empty commits to be preserved automatically in a cherry-pick. Note that when "--ff" is in effect, empty commits that meet the "fast-forward" requirement will be kept even without this option. Note also, that use of this option only keeps commits that were initially empty (i.e. the commit recorded the same tree as its parent). Commits which are made empty due to a previous commit will cause the cherry-pick to fail. To force the inclusion of those commits, use --empty=keep. read that twice bestie, it's a whole thing 🙈
  • --allow-empty-message — by default, cherry-picking a commit with an empty message will fail. This option overrides that behavior, allowing commits with empty messages to be cherry picked. no thoughts head empty 🫧
  • --empty=(drop|keep|stop) — how to handle commits being cherry-picked that are redundant with changes already in the current history.
    • drop — the commit will be dropped. 🗑️
    • keep — the commit will be kept. Implies --allow-empty. 💖
    • stop — the cherry-pick will stop when the commit is applied, allowing you to examine the commit. This is the default behavior. ✋
Note that --empty=drop and --empty=stop only specify how to handle a commit that was not initially empty, but rather became empty due to a previous commit. Commits that were initially empty will still cause the cherry-pick to fail unless one of --empty=keep or --allow-empty are specified.
  • --keep-redundant-commits — deprecated synonym for --empty=keep. it's giving legacy 🕰️
  • --strategy=<strategy> — use the given merge strategy. Should only be used once. See the MERGE STRATEGIES section in git-merge(1) for details.
  • -X<option>, --strategy-option=<option> — pass the merge strategy-specific option through to the merge strategy. See git-merge(1) for details.
  • --rerere-autoupdate, --no-rerere-autoupdate — after the rerere mechanism reuses a recorded resolution on the current conflict to update the files in the working tree, allow it to also update the index with the result of resolution. --no-rerere-autoupdate is a good way to double-check what git-rerere(1) did and catch potential mismerges, before committing the result to the index with a separate git-add(1). double-check queen behavior 👑

🧚 SEQUENCER SUBCOMMANDS 🧚

  • --continue — continue the operation in progress using the information in .git/sequencer. Can be used to continue after resolving conflicts in a failed cherry-pick or revert. pick yourself back up bestie 💪
  • --skip — skip the current commit and continue with the rest of the sequence. not me, not today 🙈
  • --quit — forget about the current operation in progress. Can be used to clear the sequencer state after a failed cherry-pick or revert. moving on periodt 💅
  • --abort — cancel the operation and return to the pre-sequence state. nope out of there 🚪

🌟 EXAMPLES 🌟

  • git cherry-pick master — apply the change introduced by the commit at the tip of the master branch and create a new commit with this change.
  • git cherry-pick ..master, git cherry-pick ^HEAD master — apply the changes introduced by all commits that are ancestors of master but not of HEAD to produce new commits.
  • git cherry-pick maint next ^master, git cherry-pick maint master..next — apply the changes introduced by all commits that are ancestors of maint or next, but not master or any of its ancestors. Note that the latter does not mean maint and everything between master and next; specifically, maint will not be used if it is included in master. tricky tricky 😭
  • git cherry-pick master~4 master~2 — apply the changes introduced by the fifth and third last commits pointed to by master and create 2 new commits with these changes.
  • git cherry-pick -n master~1 next — apply to the working tree and the index the changes introduced by the second last commit pointed to by master and by the last commit pointed to by next, but do not create any commit with these changes.
  • git cherry-pick --ff ..next — if history is linear and HEAD is an ancestor of next, update the working tree and advance the HEAD pointer to match next. Otherwise, apply the changes introduced by those commits that are in next but not HEAD to the current branch, creating a new commit for each new change.
  • git rev-list --reverse master -- README | git cherry-pick -n --stdin — apply the changes introduced by all commits on the master branch that touched README to the working tree and index, so the result can be inspected and made into a single new commit if suitable. pipeline slay 🔥

The following sequence attempts to backport a patch, bails out because the code the patch applies to has changed too much, and then tries again, this time exercising more care about matching up context lines. we love a resilient queen 🫶

$ git cherry-pick topic^             (1)
$ git diff                           (2)
$ git cherry-pick --abort            (3)
$ git cherry-pick -Xpatience topic^  (4)
  1. apply the change that would be shown by git show topic^. In this example, the patch does not apply cleanly, so information about the conflict is written to the index and working tree and no new commit results.
  2. summarize changes to be reconciled
  3. cancel the cherry-pick. In other words, return to the pre-cherry-pick state, preserving any local modifications you had in the working tree.
  4. try to apply the change introduced by topic^ again, spending extra time to avoid mistakes based on incorrectly matching context lines.

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

git-revert(1)

👑 GIT 👑

Part of the git(1) suite. one big happy family 🌈

and that's the whole vibe bestie 💖 this little page is brought to you by Git 2.56.0, dated 2026-09-27 — go forth and cherry-pick responsibly, mwah 🍒✨🎀

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