git cherry-pick

Take a commit from another branch and replay it on this one.

🎯 What & why

Apply a single commit (or a sequence) from one branch onto another. The picked commit gets a new SHA but the same change.

🧠 Mental model

Cherry-pick computes the diff of <commit> vs its parent and applies it on top of HEAD. If conflicts hit, resolve and git cherry-pick --continue. Multiple SHAs can be passed.

🛠️ Synopsis

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

🎚️ Switches & options

Flag	What it does
`-n, --no-commit`	Apply the changes, stage them, but don't commit.
`-x`	Add a 'cherry picked from <sha>' line to the commit message.
`-m <n>`	When picking a merge commit, choose mainline parent.
`--ff`	Fast-forward if possible.
`--abort/--continue/--skip`	Same flow as merge/rebase conflicts.

💡 Use cases

Backporting a bug fix from main to a release branch.
Pulling one commit from a colleague's branch without merging the whole thing.
Building a clean commit set from a chaotic branch.

🧪 Examples

Pick one commit onto current branch.

$ git cherry-pick a1b2c3d

Pick a range (exclusive of a).

$ git cherry-pick a..b

Pick with provenance trailer.

$ git cherry-pick -x abc1234

🎓 Recommendations

Use -x when picking commits to a different branch (releases) so the trail back to the original is in the message.
Avoid cherry-picking merges; if you must, use -m 1.

🪤 Common pitfalls

Cherry-picking can create equivalent but different commits on multiple branches. Tools like git cherry help find these.
Conflicts mid-pick: resolve, then --continue. Don't commit directly.

🔗 Related modules

📝 Quiz

Hit each option, then Check answers. Score is recorded; Next is always open.