More recently I’ve been wanting to include single commit changes of one branch into the main branch without merging the entire branch or replace entire files. Git has a very useful tool for this called git-cherry-pick, allowing you to apply changes from hashes from existing commits in any branch you wish to apply them (Git, n.d.).

I am too lazy to draw so I will try to illustrate how this would work visually with mediocre ascii art.

Before cherry pick:

  (cherry-pick branch)
     B -> D -> E
     ^
     |
A -> B -> C
  (main branch)

After cherry pick:

  (cherry-pick branch)
     B -> D - > E
     ^     \
     |       \
A -> B -> C -> D
  (main branch)

First make you necessary changes in the cherry-pick branch, make the commit you want to cherrypick, and retrieve the commit hash to save for later.

git add <files-and-folders-to-stage-for-commit>

git commit -m "commit D message in cherry-pick branch"

git rev-parse HEAD # get the hash
<commit-D-hash>

The simplest way to then apply the cherrypick to main is to switch to the main branch and do the cherry-pick, optionally git pull if your main branch is not up to date with the remote.

git switch main

git pull # In case you are not up to date on main branch, important for managing merge conflicts.

git cherry-pick <commit-D-hash>

Alternatively, I will sometimes checkout main to another branch to cherry pick a commit first and merge after in order to make sure my changes work how I want and I can manage merge conflicts if they come up. This is also necessary if you are sharing a repo with multiple people and need to create a PR for review before it can be merged into main.

git switch main

git pull

git checkout -b test-cherry-pick

git cherry-pick <commit-D-hash>

If you do have merge conflicts, deal with them manually, stage and commit changes, and then continue the cherry-pick.

# First deal with merge conflicts
git add <files-with-merge-conflicts>

git commit -m "Final changes after merge conflicts."

git cherry-pick --continue

Alternatively, if you would like to abort the process you can use git cherry-pick --abort.

Now either git push and create a new pull request into main or merge into main locally before push.

git switch main

git merge test-cherry-pick

git push

Ok those were the basics of applying individual changes using git-cherry-pick. Happy cherry-picking!

References