Cherry-Picking

Advanced Git

Amanda Crawford-Adamo

Software and Data Engineer

What is cherry-pick?

Applies the changes from a specific commit to another branch

Cherry-Pick Single Commit

git cherry-pick <commit-hash>

Cherry-Pick Multiple Commits

git cherry-pick <hash1> <hash2> ..

Purpose

Apply specific bug fixes across branches
Roll back features to stable versions
Selectively apply experimental changes
Recover lost commits

Cherry-Pick example

A graph of both main and feature. Main has two commit. The feature branch diverges from main after the last commit.

Two images showing main and feature branch log before the cherry pick process.

Cherry-Pick process

Checkout main branch
```
git checkout main
```
Run cherry-pick command to bring in commit def456 changes from feature branch.
```
git cherry-pick def456
```

A graph of both main and feature. Main has three commit. The feature branch diverges from main after the second commit with two additional. commit. Main's third commit is a cherry picked commit from feature branch's last commit.

Resolving cherry-pick conflicts

Conflict resolution steps

Manually edit conflicting files
Add resolved files to staging using git add <resolved-files>
Continue with the cherry-pick process by running --continue flag

git cherry-pick --continue

Stopping a cherry-pick

To stop a cherry-pick operation, use the --abort flag

git cherry-pick --abort

When to use cherry-pick

Use cases

Applying hotfixes
Testing isolated features

Cautions

Can create duplicate commits
May complicate project history if overused
Larger changes: consider merging or rebasing

Let's practice!

Advanced Git