git-cherry-pick(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | SEQUENCER SUBCOMMANDS | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON

GIT-CHERRY-PICK(1)             Git Manual             GIT-CHERRY-PICK(1)

NAME         top

       git-cherry-pick - Apply the changes introduced by some existing
       commits

SYNOPSIS         top

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

DESCRIPTION         top

       Given one or more existing commits, apply the change each one
       introduces, recording a new commit for each. This requires your
       working tree to be clean (no modifications from the HEAD commit).

       When it is not obvious how to apply a change, the following
       happens:

        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.

        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.

OPTIONS         top

       <commit>...
           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).

       -e, --edit
           With this option, git cherry-pick will let you edit the
           commit message prior to committing.

       --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.

       -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.

       -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.

       -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.

       -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.

       -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.

       --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.

       --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 are dropped. To force the inclusion of those commits
           use --keep-redundant-commits.

       --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.

       --keep-redundant-commits
           If a commit being cherry picked duplicates a commit already
           in the current history, it will become empty. By default
           these redundant commits cause cherry-pick to stop so the user
           can examine the commit. This option overrides that behavior
           and creates an empty commit object. Implies --allow-empty.

       --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 rerere did and catch potential mismerges,
           before committing the result to the index with a separate git
           add.

SEQUENCER SUBCOMMANDS         top

       --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.

       --skip
           Skip the current commit and continue with the rest of the
           sequence.

       --quit
           Forget about the current operation in progress. Can be used
           to clear the sequencer state after a failed cherry-pick or
           revert.

       --abort
           Cancel the operation and return to the pre-sequence state.

EXAMPLES         top

       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.

       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.

       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.

           $ 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         top

       git-revert(1)

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-20.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Git 2.43.0.174.g055bb6         2023-12-20             GIT-CHERRY-PICK(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)git-cherry(1)git-revert(1)gitworkflows(7)