GIT-CHERRY(1)

🍒 GIT-CHERRY(1) 🍒

Git Manual — okay so bestie, this is the page for git-cherry, and it is genuinely iconic for figuring out which commits are still waiting to land upstream. No cap, it’s giving “patch workflow main character energy.” 💅

---

✨ NAME ✨

git-cherry — Find commits yet to be applied to upstream. 🫶

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

git cherry [-v] [<upstream> [<head> [<limit>]]]

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

So, git-cherry determines whether there are commits in <head>..<upstream> that are equivalent to those in the range <limit>..<head>. Literally its whole job. 🔥

The equivalence test is based on the diff, after removing whitespace and line numbers. Because of that, git-cherry detects when commits have been "copied" by means of git-cherry-pick(1), git-am(1) or git-rebase(1). Obsessed — it catches the copy-paste era. 💀

It outputs the SHA1 of every commit in <limit>..<head>, prefixed with - for commits that have an equivalent in <upstream>, and + for commits that do not. So - is “already upstream, bestie,” and + is “still needs to be sent.” Periodt. ✨

🔥 OPTIONS 🔥

• -v — Show the commit subjects next to the SHA1s. Cute little name tags for your commits. 🎀
• <upstream> — Upstream branch to search for equivalent commits. Defaults to the upstream branch of HEAD. It’s the “where are we checking?” branch. 💖
• <head> — Working branch; defaults to HEAD. This is your side of the story. 🌸
• <limit> — Do not report commits up to (and including) limit. Basically: “bestie, don’t look past this point.” 🦋

🌸 EXAMPLES 🌸

🧚 Patch workflows

git-cherry is frequently used in patch-based workflows (see gitworkflows(7)) to determine if a series of patches has been applied by the upstream maintainer. In such a workflow you might create and send a topic branch like this:

$ git checkout -b topic origin/master
# work and create some commits
$ git format-patch origin/master
$ git send-email ... 00*

Later, you can see whether your changes have been applied by saying (still on topic):

$ git fetch  # update your notion of origin/master
$ git cherry -v

🍓 Concrete example

In a situation where topic consisted of three commits, and the maintainer applied two of them, the situation might look like:

$ git log --graph --oneline --decorate --boundary origin/master...topic
* 7654321 (origin/master) upstream tip commit
[... snip some other commits ...]
* cccc111 cherry-pick of C
* aaaa111 cherry-pick of A
[... snip a lot more that has happened ...]
| * cccc000 (topic) commit C
| * bbbb000 commit B
| * aaaa000 commit A
|/
o 1234567 branch point

In such cases, git-cherry shows a concise summary of what has yet to be applied:

$ git cherry origin/master topic
- cccc000... commit C
+ bbbb000... commit B
- aaaa000... commit A

Here, we see that the commits A and C (marked with -) can be dropped from your topic branch when you rebase it on top of origin/master, while the commit B (marked with +) still needs to be kept so that it will be sent to be applied to origin/master. Slay. 💅

🦋 Using a limit

The optional <limit> is useful in cases where your topic is based on other work that is not in upstream. Expanding on the previous example, this might look like:

$ git log --graph --oneline --decorate --boundary origin/master...topic
* 7654321 (origin/master) upstream tip commit
[... snip some other commits ...]
* cccc111 cherry-pick of C
* aaaa111 cherry-pick of A
[... snip a lot more that has happened ...]
| * cccc000 (topic) commit C
| * bbbb000 commit B
| * aaaa000 commit A
| * 0000fff (base) unpublished stuff F
[... snip ...]
| * 0000aaa unpublished stuff A
|/
o 1234567 merge-base between upstream and topic

By specifying base as the limit, you can avoid listing commits between base and topic:

$ git cherry origin/master topic base
- cccc000... commit C
+ bbbb000... commit B
- aaaa000... commit A

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

git-patch-id(1) — go look, bestie. 🫶

💜 GIT 💜

Part of the git(1) suite. Obviously. 💖

---

mwah 💋 this page was served fresh from Git 2.56.0, dated 2026-09-27. bye bestie, go check those commits! 🍒✨