What does cherry-picking a commit with Git mean

Question

Hi Guys,

I am learning Git. Recently. I got to know one word cherry-picking in Git. Can anyone tell me what it means?

Answer 1

Hi@akhtar,

Git cherry-pick is a powerful command that enables arbitrary Git commits to be picked by reference and appended to the current working HEAD. Cherry-picking is the act of picking a commit from a branch and applying it to another. git cherry-pick can be useful for undoing changes.

• Make sure you are on the branch you want to apply the commit to.

$ git checkout master

• Execute the following command.

$ git cherry-pick <commit-hash>

Answer 2

To answer your question, Cherry Picking in Git means that making a choice of choosing a commit from one branch and applying it into another branch. This contrasts with different ways such as merge and rebase which would normally apply various commits onto a different branch. You need to ensure that you have to be on the branch that you wish to apply the commit to:- git switch master and then you must execute the following:-

git cherry-pick <commit-hash>

However, do note that if you cherry-pick from a public branch, you should consider using

git cherry-pick -x <commit-hash>

Which will help in the generation of a standardized commit message and by this way, you along with your co-workers can still keep track of the origin of the commit and may avoid merging conflicts in the future. If you do have notes which are attached to your commit, then they do not follow the cherry-pick. You have to use the following in order to bring them over:-

git notes copy <from> <to>