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Rebase and interactive rebase work with the set of commits on a branch: they break them down, reorder them, reapply them. git cherry-pick does something far more surgical: it takes one specific commit, wherever it is, and applies its change onto the branch you are on now, creating a new commit.

The name says it all: cherry-picking is choosing the cherries one by one. And like every surgical tool, it is excellent in hands that know when to use it and dangerous in hands that use it out of habit. A badly placed cherry-pick duplicates work, muddles the history and causes absurd conflicts months later.

Ana needs it today. She has fixed the bug on main whereby the focus is lost when a task is deleted, and version 1.x, still deployed at the client, has the same bug but lives on a separate maintenance branch which cannot receive everything that is on main. She wants that commit and nothing else.

What git cherry-pick does
Ana's case: taking a fix over to maintenance
Several commits and ranges
Useful options: -n, -x, -e, -s
Conflicts while cherry-picking
Rescuing a commit from an abandoned branch
The problem of duplicates
Detecting duplicates: git cherry and --cherry-mark
When NOT to use cherry-pick

What `git cherry-pick` does

git cherry-pick <sha>

Git takes the diff that <sha> introduces (that is, the difference between that commit and its parent), applies it onto the current state of your branch and creates a new commit with that change.

The key word, once again, is new. Just as with rebase (lesson 05-01), and for the same reason to do with the data model of lesson 01-04: the resulting commit has a different parent, therefore different content, therefore a different hash. It is not "the same commit on two branches": they are two different commits that happen to introduce the same change.

gitGraph
   commit id: "1a4c8d6"
   commit id: "8b6d3c2"
   branch maintenance/1.x
   commit id: "e4f7b91"
   checkout main
   commit id: "c5d9b1e"
   commit id: "7d3a8f4"
   checkout maintenance/1.x
   cherry-pick id: "7d3a8f4"

The diagram lies a little on purpose, because gitGraph reuses the original commit's label. In reality, what appears on maintenance/1.x is a different commit, with hash b9e2c17, introducing the same change as 7d3a8f4. Remember that every time you see a cherry-pick diagram: the dotted arrow means "the same change", never "the same object".

What is preserved and what is not, to complete the mental table you started in 05-01:

Element	Preserved?
Message	Yes (editable with `-e`)
Author and email	Yes: it still belongs to whoever wrote it
Author date	Yes
Committer and their date	No: you become the committer, now
Content of the change	Yes, if there is no conflict
Parent and hash	No

Preserving authorship matters: when you take a colleague's fix over to another branch, the credit remains theirs.

Ana's case: taking a fix over to maintenance

The task-manager repository has two live lines:

main, where version 2 is being developed.
maintenance/1.x, which reproduces what is deployed at the client and receives fixes only.

Ana fixed the focus bug on main:

git switch main
git log --oneline -3

7d3a8f4 (HEAD -> main, origin/main) Return focus to the text field after deleting a task
c5d9b1e Extract the task element creation into its own function
8b6d3c2 Store the tasks in localStorage

The commit is small and self-contained, which is exactly what makes a commit a good candidate for cherry-picking:

git show 7d3a8f4

commit 7d3a8f4...
Author: Ana Ferrer <[email protected]>
Date:   Wed Jul 29 11:42:08 2026 +0200

    Return focus to the text field after deleting a task

diff --git a/app.js b/app.js
--- a/app.js
+++ b/app.js
@@ -48,6 +48,7 @@ function deleteTask(id) {
   tasks = tasks.filter(function (t) { return t.id !== id; });
   saveTasks();
   renderList();
+  document.getElementById('new-task').focus();
 }

Now for the transplant:

# 1. Move to the destination branch
git switch maintenance/1.x
git log --oneline -2

e4f7b91 (HEAD -> maintenance/1.x, origin/maintenance/1.x) Fix the date format in the list
8b6d3c2 Store the tasks in localStorage

# 2. Bring over just that commit, recording where it came from
git cherry-pick -x 7d3a8f4

[maintenance/1.x b9e2c17] Return focus to the text field after deleting a task
 Date: Wed Jul 29 11:42:08 2026 +0200
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

# 3. Check the result
git show b9e2c17

commit b9e2c17...
Author: Ana Ferrer <[email protected]>
Date:   Wed Jul 29 11:42:08 2026 +0200

    Return focus to the text field after deleting a task

    (cherry picked from commit 7d3a8f4c9b1e5d2a8f7c3b6e9d4a1c8f5b2e7d3a)

diff --git a/app.js b/app.js
...

A new hash (b9e2c17), Ana's authorship intact, an identical change, and a line at the end of the message saying where it came from. That line was put there by -x, and it deserves its own section.

Several commits and ranges

git cherry-pick accepts several individual commits and ranges.

# Several individual commits, in the order given
git cherry-pick 7d3a8f4 c5d9b1e 4e7f2a9

They are applied in the order you write them, not in chronological order. If they depend on one another, write them in the order they were made or you will have avoidable conflicts.

Ranges use the same two-dot notation from lesson 02-06, and with the same trap:

# From the commit AFTER A, up to B (all inclusive except A)
git cherry-pick A..B

# From A INCLUDED up to B
git cherry-pick A^..B

Expression	Commits applied
`A..B`	Those after `A` up to `B`. `A` is NOT included
`A^..B`	The same, but `A` is included
`B`	Only `B`
`B~3..B`	The last three up to `B`
`--stdin`	Those passed to it on standard input, one per line

An example with real names: Bruno wants to take over to maintenance the three fix commits he made on feature/csv-export, which run from 6e1d9f3 to 9c7e5a1:

git switch maintenance/1.x
git cherry-pick -x 6e1d9f3^..9c7e5a1

[maintenance/1.x 3a8f2d5] Add the conversion of tasks to CSV format
[maintenance/1.x 7b4e9c1] Download the generated CSV from the browser
[maintenance/1.x d62a4f8] Add the export button to the action bar

Three new commits with three new hashes, in the right order.

An important warning: a cherry-pick range does not include merge commits. If the range contains a merge, Git skips it silently (or fails, depending on the case). Transplanting a merge commit requires -m to choose the parent against which to compute the diff, just as in revert (lesson 05-06), and it is hardly ever what you want. If your range has merges in it, what you were probably after was a merge or a rebase.

Useful options: `-n`, `-x`, `-e`, `-s`

Option	Long name	What it does
`-n`	`--no-commit`	Applies the changes to the working tree and the index, without committing
`-x`	—	Adds `(cherry picked from commit <sha>)` to the message
`-e`	`--edit`	Opens the editor so you can modify the message
`-s`	`--signoff`	Adds a `Signed-off-by: Name <email>` line
`--ff`	—	If the commit is a direct child of `HEAD`, does a fast-forward instead of creating a new one
`--strategy-option`	`-X ours` / `-X theirs`	Automatic conflict resolution in favour of one side
`--allow-empty`	—	Allows the commit to be created even if it contributes no changes

-n (--no-commit) is for grouping. If you want five small commits to arrive on the destination branch as one single one:

git cherry-pick -n 6e1d9f3 b8c2a70 9c7e5a1
git status --short

M  app.js
M  index.html
M  styles.css

git commit -m "Port the CSV export fixes to the 1.x branch"

The three changes end up staged in the index and you decide when and with what message to commit them. If you have second thoughts halfway, git cherry-pick --abort undoes everything accumulated.

-x is essential on maintenance branches and is the reason the option exists. It leaves a note in the message that lets you answer, months later, the question "where did this commit come from?":

Return focus to the text field after deleting a task

(cherry picked from commit 7d3a8f4c9b1e5d2a8f7c3b6e9d4a1c8f5b2e7d3a)

With that line, git show 7d3a8f4 takes you to the original and you can see its full context. Without it, the commit appears on the maintenance branch with no possible explanation.

Careful with one nuance: -x only makes sense when the source commit is public. If you copy a commit from a local branch you are about to delete, the reference will point at a hash nobody else can resolve, and the note confuses more than it helps. Git's documentation is explicit on this: use it to copy from one public branch to another.

-s adds the Signed-off-by: line, a convention of projects that require contributors to certify the origin of their contributions (the Linux kernel's Developer Certificate of Origin is the canonical case). It is not a cryptographic signature; those are GPG-signed tags and commits, which are covered in lesson 08-05.

Conflicts while cherry-picking

A cherry-pick applies a patch onto a context that may have changed. It is quite normal for it to conflict, especially when the destination branch has diverged a lot.

git cherry-pick -x 7d3a8f4

Auto-merging app.js
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in app.js
error: could not apply 7d3a8f4... Return focus to the text field after deleting a task
hint: After resolving the conflicts, mark them with
hint: "git add/rm <pathspec>", then run
hint: "git cherry-pick --continue".
hint: You can instead skip this commit with "git cherry-pick --skip".
hint: To abort and get back to the state before "git cherry-pick",
hint: run "git cherry-pick --abort".

The mechanics of resolution — markers, git status, editing, git add — are those of lesson 03-05 and do not change. What is specific is how you get out:

Command	What it does
`git cherry-pick --continue`	Commits with your resolution and carries on with the next one in the range
`git cherry-pick --skip`	Discards that commit and carries on with the rest
`git cherry-pick --abort`	Cancels the whole operation and returns the branch to its initial state
`git cherry-pick --quit`	Leaves the cherry-pick state but keeps what has already been applied

And here, good news: in a cherry-pick, ours and theirs are NOT inverted. ours is your destination branch (where you are) and theirs is the commit you are bringing in, which is the intuitive arrangement. The inversion of lesson 05-01 is a peculiarity of rebase, not a general rule.

# During a cherry-pick conflict
git checkout --ours app.js      # the version from my destination branch
git checkout --theirs app.js    # the version from the commit I am bringing in

If the conflict looks very large for the size of the change, that is a signal: you are probably porting a commit that depends on another one you have not ported. Look at git log --oneline <source> around the commit and check whether there is an earlier commit that is needed too.

When the commit conflicts because its change has already been applied on the destination branch, Git tells you in a different way:

The previous cherry-pick is now empty, possibly due to conflict resolution.
If you wish to commit it anyway, use:

    git commit --allow-empty

There, git cherry-pick --skip is the right answer: there is nothing to contribute.

Rescuing a commit from an abandoned branch

The second legitimate case. Carla started feature/colour-labels and the team decided to shelve it: the approach was not convincing. But inside it there was one commit that was worth keeping: a function that validates the hexadecimal format of a colour and turns out to be useful for something else.

# 1. Find the commit on the abandoned branch
git log --oneline feature/colour-labels

92c7a06 Show the colour label in the list
d5e8f31 Add the colour field to the task model
5f1c4b8 Add hexadecimal colour validation
e91d4a8 Extract the task element creation into its own function

# 2. See exactly what it does before transplanting it
git show 5f1c4b8 --stat

 app.js | 12 ++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+)

# 3. Transplant it onto main
git switch main
git cherry-pick 5f1c4b8

[main 8c3e7f1] Add hexadecimal colour validation
 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+)

Here Carla has not used -x, and quite right too: the source branch is going to be deleted, so leaving a reference in the message to a hash that will be left orphaned helps nobody. In cases like this, if you want to leave a record, write it in human language with -e:

git cherry-pick -e 5f1c4b8

Add hexadecimal colour validation

Rescued from the feature/colour-labels branch, which was dropped
for other reasons. The function is useful in its own right.

A third case, to complete the catalogue of legitimate uses: you were on the wrong branch. You have made three commits on main that should have gone on a feature branch. The classic solution is to create the branch where you are, and put main back where it belongs; but if you would rather not touch main, cherry-picking the three commits onto the right branch is a perfectly valid way out. The full range of "I committed on the wrong branch" cases is in lesson 09-01.

The problem of duplicates

This is where cherry-picking makes you pay, and it is worth understanding properly because it is the main reason not to overuse it.

The scenario: Bruno has feature/weekly-report with five commits. One of them, 4d7c1a9, fixes a bug that is urgently needed in production now. Bruno cherry-picks that commit onto main:

git switch main
git cherry-pick 4d7c1a9

[main 2e9b6f3] Fix the calculation of overdue tasks

Perfect: the bug is fixed on main and deployed. But now, in the repository, the same change exists twice: as 4d7c1a9 on Bruno's branch and as 2e9b6f3 on main.

gitGraph
   commit id: "e91d4a8"
   branch feature/weekly-report
   commit id: "a1c5e83"
   commit id: "4d7c1a9"
   commit id: "6f2b9d4"
   checkout main
   commit id: "2e9b6f3"

A fortnight later, Bruno finishes the feature and merges his branch into main. What happens?

The good case. If nobody has touched those lines since, the three-way merge notices that the change from 4d7c1a9 is already applied on main (the result is the same on both sides) and the merge comes out clean. Commit 4d7c1a9 enters the history, but its content is not applied twice. The result is correct; it is simply that main's git log shows two commits saying the same thing.

The bad case. If somebody has modified those lines on main after the cherry-pick, the merge sees a change on theirs (the one from 4d7c1a9) over a base that no longer matches, and it conflicts. It is the most bewildering conflict there is: the markers show two almost identical versions of code you have already fixed, and there is no way of understanding why it clashes unless you remember the cherry-pick from a fortnight ago.

The worst case. If the change is not idempotent — adding a line to a list, incrementing a counter, adding an entry to a configuration file — the merge may apply it twice without conflicting. The result builds, passes superficial tests and is wrong.

The conclusion is the one that gives the last section its title: cherry-pick is for when you are not going to merge afterwards, or for when merging is not an option (branches that never come together, such as main and maintenance/1.x).

Detecting duplicates: `git cherry` and `--cherry-mark`

Git has tools for recognising commits that introduce the same change with different hashes. They are based on the patch-id: a hash computed over the content of the diff, ignoring the context, the blank lines and the line numbers. Two commits with the same patch-id do the same thing even though they are different objects.

git cherry compares two branches and marks each commit with + (it is not on the other one) or - (it is already there, with a different hash):

git cherry -v main feature/weekly-report

+ a1c5e83f2b7d9c4e1a8f6b3d5c2e9a7f4b1d8c6e Add the weekly report view
- 4d7c1a9e8b2f5d3c7a9e1f4b6d8c2a5e3f7b9d1c Fix the calculation of overdue tasks
+ 6f2b9d4c1e7a3f8b5d2c9e6a4f1b8d3c7e5a2f9b Add the filter by week

The - on the second line means: "this commit is already applied on main, even though it has a different hash there". Exactly what we were looking for. The syntax is git cherry [-v] <upstream> [<head>], and -v adds each commit's subject.

It is especially useful before merging or before porting a batch of commits to maintenance: it tells you what really remains to be taken over.

git log --cherry-mark does the same within a log, over a three-dot range:

git log --oneline --cherry-mark --left-right main...feature/weekly-report

> a1c5e83 Add the weekly report view
= 4d7c1a9 Fix the calculation of overdue tasks
= 2e9b6f3 Fix the calculation of overdue tasks
> 6f2b9d4 Add the filter by week

Mark	Meaning
`<`	Only on the left-hand side (`main`)
`>`	Only on the right-hand side (the branch)
`=`	Present on both sides as an equivalent change (same patch-id)

There they are, side by side, the two commits that do the same thing. Related variants:

# Hide the equivalent ones: only what really remains to be integrated
git log --oneline --cherry-pick --left-right main...feature/weekly-report

# A shortcut for the above, right-hand side only
git log --oneline --cherry feature/weekly-report...main

--cherry-pick is the one you will use most: it filters out the noise and leaves you only the work that genuinely remains.

An honest limitation: the patch-id compares the diff. If there was a conflict during the cherry-pick and you resolved it differently, the resulting diff will not be identical and Git will not recognise it as equivalent. The detection is a help, not a guarantee.

When NOT to use cherry-pick

Situation	What to do instead
You want to take a whole branch over to another	`git merge` (or `rebase` if it is not published yet)
You are going to merge that branch later on	Wait and merge: you avoid the duplicates of section 7
You need more than three or four consecutive commits	`rebase --onto`: it reapplies a whole stretch and leaves no duplicates
You want to bring your branch up to date with `main`	`git merge main` or `git rebase main`, never individual cherry-picks from `main`
The commit depends on others you are not taking over	Port the dependencies too, or redo the change by hand
You want to "copy" a commit onto the same branch	You are almost certainly after `revert` (05-06) or an interactive rebase

The decision rule, in one sentence: if the two branches are going to end up joining, do not copy commits between them; merge them. Cherry-pick is for branches that live in parallel permanently (maintenance, old versions, separate environments) or for rescuing something from a branch that is about to die.

On the golden rule: of the three operations in this block, cherry-pick is the least dangerous, because it rewrites nothing. It adds a new commit to the branch you are on; it does not touch the source and does not force anybody to force a push. Its danger is not rewriting but duplication, which you pay for later and in the form of conflicts that are hard to explain.

Common Mistakes and Tips

Mistake 1: believing that cherry-pick "moves" the commit. It copies it. The original is still on its branch, as alive as before. If you wanted to move it, you have to delete it from the source with an interactive rebase (drop), with all that the golden rule implies.

Mistake 2: cherry-picking commits from a branch you are going to merge later. It is the number-one source of incomprehensible conflicts. If the branch is going in whole, wait.

Mistake 3: forgetting -x when porting to maintenance. In six months' time, that commit of unknown origin on maintenance/1.x will be a mystery. It costs two characters.

Mistake 4: using -x when copying from a local branch you are going to delete. The reference is left pointing at an unresolvable hash. There it is better to use -e and a note in human language.

Mistake 5: cherry-picking without looking at the commit first. git show <sha> takes three seconds and saves you discovering halfway through the conflict that the commit touched six files and depended on three others.

Mistake 6: not checking the range. A..B excludes A. If you expected five commits to be applied and four are, that is why. Always check first with git log --oneline A..B.

Mistake 7: getting the direction of git cherry the wrong way round. The first argument is the upstream (what you are comparing against, usually main) and the second is the branch you are examining. The other way round will give you precisely the opposite of what you expect.

Tip 1: make small, self-contained commits. That is not advice about cherry-picking, it is the advice that makes cherry-picking possible. A commit that does one single thing transplants without drama; one that mixes three does not.

Tip 2: always verify after porting. The patch applying without conflict does not mean it works on the other branch. Run the tests.

Tip 3: use git cherry -v before a porting campaign. It will tell you exactly what remains to be taken over and what is already there, without relying on your memory.

Tip 4: for large batches, git rebase --onto instead of many cherry-picks. It is the same operation underneath, but in one go and with a clear list of what is being reapplied.

Tip 5: if the cherry-pick gets complicated, abort. git cherry-pick --abort leaves the repository exactly as it was. Rebuilding the change by hand on the destination branch is sometimes quicker and always clearer than wrestling with a patch that does not fit.

Exercises

Exercise 1: porting a fix to maintenance

Set up a repository with main and a maintenance/1.x branch coming off an old commit. Add two commits to main, one of them a small fix. Then:

Port only the fix to maintenance/1.x, recording where it came from.
Demonstrate that the hash is different but the diff is identical.
Demonstrate that the original author has been preserved.

Exercise 2: the duplicate and how to detect it

Deliberately provoke the problem of section 7:

Create a branch with three commits.
Cherry-pick the second one onto main.
Use git cherry -v to demonstrate that Git knows that change is already on main.
Use git log --cherry-mark --left-right to see the two equivalent commits marked with =.
Merge the branch into main and observe what happens to the history.

Exercise 3: grouping several commits into one

With a branch that has four small commits, take the first three over to another branch as one single commit with a message of its own, using -n. Verify with git show --stat that the resulting commit contains the changes from all three.

Solutions

Solution 1:

mkdir /tmp/practice-cherry && cd /tmp/practice-cherry
git init -b main
echo "v1" > app.js && git add . && git commit -m "Initial version"

git switch -c maintenance/1.x
git switch main

printf 'v1\nnew feature\n' > app.js && git commit -am "Add the version 2 feature"
printf 'v1\nnew feature\nfix\n' > app.js
git -c user.name="Ana Ferrer" -c user.email="[email protected]" commit -am "Fix the focus after deleting"

git log --oneline

5c9e1f4 Fix the focus after deleting
a72b8d3 Add the version 2 feature
1e4f7c9 Initial version

# 1. Port only the fix
git switch maintenance/1.x
git cherry-pick -x 5c9e1f4

Auto-merging app.js
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in app.js

(It conflicts because the feature line is missing on maintenance/1.x. It is resolved by keeping only the fix.)

printf 'v1\nfix\n' > app.js
git add app.js
git cherry-pick --continue

# 2 and 3. Compare
git log --oneline -1
git show --pretty='%h | %an | %ad' --date=short HEAD | head -4
git show --pretty='%h | %an | %ad' --date=short 5c9e1f4 | head -4

d81f6a2 Fix the focus after deleting

d81f6a2 | Ana Ferrer | 2026-07-29

5c9e1f4 | Ana Ferrer | 2026-07-29

A different hash, the same authorship and the same author date. The new one's message additionally includes the line (cherry picked from commit 5c9e1f4...).

Solution 2:

mkdir /tmp/practice-duplicates && cd /tmp/practice-duplicates
git init -b main
printf 'line 1\n' > f.txt && git add . && git commit -m "Base"

git switch -c feature/something
printf 'line 1\nA\n' > f.txt && git commit -am "Commit A"
printf 'line 1\nA\nB\n' > f.txt && git commit -am "Commit B (the urgent fix)"
printf 'line 1\nA\nB\nC\n' > f.txt && git commit -am "Commit C"

git log --oneline

9f2a7c1 Commit C
4d8e3b6 Commit B (the urgent fix)
c17b5f9 Commit A
2e6a9d4 Base

# 2. Cherry-pick the second one onto main
git switch main
git cherry-pick 4d8e3b6

Auto-merging f.txt
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in f.txt

printf 'line 1\nB\n' > f.txt
git add f.txt && git cherry-pick --continue

# 3. git cherry detects it
git cherry -v main feature/something

+ c17b5f9... Commit A
- 4d8e3b6... Commit B (the urgent fix)
+ 9f2a7c1... Commit C

Only if the resulting diff matches; if your conflict resolution changed the patch, it will appear with +. That is the limitation we mentioned.

# 4. The marked view
git log --oneline --cherry-mark --left-right main...feature/something

< 7b3e9f1 Commit B (the urgent fix)
> c17b5f9 Commit A
> 4d8e3b6 Commit B (the urgent fix)
> 9f2a7c1 Commit C

# 5. The merge
git merge feature/something
git log --oneline

You will see the ported commit and the original coexisting in main's history, saying the same thing twice. If the conflict was resolved differently, it will also have conflicted on merging. That is exactly the price of a premature cherry-pick.

Solution 3:

mkdir /tmp/practice-group && cd /tmp/practice-group
git init -b main
echo "base" > f.txt && git add . && git commit -m "Base"

git switch -c source
echo "one" > one.txt && git add . && git commit -m "One"
echo "two" > two.txt && git add . && git commit -m "Two"
echo "three" > three.txt && git add . && git commit -m "Three"
echo "four" > four.txt && git add . && git commit -m "Four"

git log --oneline source

8c4f1e7 Four
3b9d6a2 Three
f51e8c4 Two
a27c9f3 One
1d6b4e8 Base

git switch main
git cherry-pick -n a27c9f3^..3b9d6a2
git status --short

A  one.txt
A  three.txt
A  two.txt

git commit -m "Port the first three steps as a single change"
git show --stat HEAD

commit 6e2d8b5...
    Port the first three steps as a single change

 one.txt   | 1 +
 three.txt | 1 +
 two.txt   | 1 +
 3 files changed, 3 insertions(+)

Note the range: a27c9f3^..3b9d6a2 includes One, Two and Three. Without the ^ you would have ported only Two and Three.

Conclusion

git cherry-pick is the module's precision tool. The essentials:

It copies a commit's change onto your current branch, creating a new commit with a different hash. It preserves the message, the author and the author date; you become the committer.
It accepts individual commits and ranges, with the usual trap that A..B excludes A and A^..B does not. Merge commits are left out of ranges.
-x records the origin and is indispensable when porting to public maintenance branches; -n lets you accumulate several commits and commit them as one; -e edits the message and -s adds the sign-off.
Conflicts are resolved as always (lesson 03-05) and you get out with --continue, --skip or --abort. Here ours and theirs are NOT inverted: the inversion was a rebase thing.
There are two legitimate cases: taking a fix over to a branch that will never be merged with the source (maintenance, old versions), and rescuing a commit from a branch that is about to be abandoned.
The price of overuse is duplicates: if you copy a commit from a branch you later merge, the same change ends up in the history twice and, in the worst case, applied twice.
git cherry -v and git log --cherry-mark/--cherry-pick detect equivalent changes by comparing the patch-id, and are the way to know what genuinely remains to be ported.
If the two branches are going to come together, do not copy: merge.

What comes next

The three previous lessons have manipulated commits: reapplying them, reorganising them, copying them. All of them start from the same premise: that the work is already committed.

But day-to-day life throws up a different and very frequent problem. You are halfway through something, with the file half written and nothing worth committing, and an emergency comes in that has to be dealt with now. You do not want to commit a wip (even though it can be fixed with what you learned in 05-02), you do not want to lose what you have done, and you need a clean working tree in order to switch branch.

Git has a drawer for that, and we have been promising it since lesson 03-02: git stash. We open it in lesson 05-04: Stashing Changes.

Cherry-Picking Commits

Contents

What `git cherry-pick` does

Ana's case: taking a fix over to maintenance

Several commits and ranges

Useful options: `-n`, `-x`, `-e`, `-s`

Conflicts while cherry-picking

Rescuing a commit from an abandoned branch

The problem of duplicates

Detecting duplicates: `git cherry` and `--cherry-mark`

When NOT to use cherry-pick

Common Mistakes and Tips

Exercises

Exercise 1: porting a fix to maintenance

Exercise 2: the duplicate and how to detect it

Exercise 3: grouping several commits into one

Solutions

Conclusion

What comes next

Mastering Git: From Beginner to Advanced

Module 1: Introduction to Git

Module 2: Basic Git Operations

Module 3: Branching and Merging

Module 4: Working with Remote Repositories

Module 5: Advanced Git Operations

Module 6: Git Tools and Techniques

Module 7: Collaboration and Workflow Strategies

Module 8: Git Best Practices and Tips

Module 9: Troubleshooting and Debugging

Module 10: Git in the Real World

Cherry-Picking Commits

Contents

What git cherry-pick does

Ana's case: taking a fix over to maintenance

Several commits and ranges

Useful options: -n, -x, -e, -s

Conflicts while cherry-picking

Rescuing a commit from an abandoned branch

The problem of duplicates

Detecting duplicates: git cherry and --cherry-mark

When NOT to use cherry-pick

Common Mistakes and Tips

Exercises

Exercise 1: porting a fix to maintenance

Exercise 2: the duplicate and how to detect it

Exercise 3: grouping several commits into one

Solutions

Conclusion

What comes next

Mastering Git: From Beginner to Advanced

Module 1: Introduction to Git

Module 2: Basic Git Operations

Module 3: Branching and Merging

Module 4: Working with Remote Repositories

Module 5: Advanced Git Operations

Module 6: Git Tools and Techniques

Module 7: Collaboration and Workflow Strategies

Module 8: Git Best Practices and Tips

Module 9: Troubleshooting and Debugging

Module 10: Git in the Real World

What `git cherry-pick` does

Useful options: `-n`, `-x`, `-e`, `-s`

Detecting duplicates: `git cherry` and `--cherry-mark`