git cherry-pick

Cherry-pick applies a specific commit from any branch onto your current branch. You are selecting exactly the change you want without merging the entire source branch. Perfect for applying hotfixes or extracting useful changes from unfinished work.

01.When Cherry-Pick Saves the Day

Common real-world scenarios: A critical security fix was committed to a feature branch — you need it on main and on the release branch right now. You accidentally committed to the wrong branch and need to move that one commit. A teammate wrote a useful utility function on their branch and you want it without taking all their WIP code.

Branch Visualization

main

feature

HEAD

02.Cherry-Pick Creates New Commits

Cherry-pick always creates a brand new commit with a new SHA hash — the content is identical to the original but the metadata differs (hash, timestamp, parent pointer). The original commit is NOT moved or deleted. If conflicts occur during cherry-pick, resolve them the same way as merge conflicts, then run git cherry-pick --continue.

Commit Timeline

a1b2c3d

init

b2c3d4e

feat

c3d4e5f

fix

d4e5f6a

HEAD

Commands

commands — click to reveal output

git log --oneline feature/login

Find the exact commit hash you want

▼ show output

git checkout main

Switch to the branch you want to apply the commit to

git cherry-pick d4e5f6a

Apply that specific commit

▼ show output

git cherry-pick d4e5f6a..f9a3c21

Apply an inclusive range of consecutive commits

git cherry-pick d4e5f6a c3d4e5f b2c3d4e

Apply three specific non-consecutive commits

git cherry-pick --no-commit d4e5f6a

Apply changes staged but do not commit (review first)

git cherry-pick --abort

Abort mid-pick if something goes wrong

KNOWLEDGE CHECK

What happens to the original commit after cherry-picking it?

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