Selective Commit Migration with Cherry-Pick

Intermediate10 min

Use git cherry-pick to selectively apply specific commits from one branch to another without merging the entire branch history.

Prerequisites

-Git installed
-Multiple branches with divergent histories
-Knowledge of commit hashes to cherry-pick

Steps

Identify commits to cherry-pick

Review the commit history of the source branch to find the specific commit hashes you want to apply to your current branch.

$ git log --oneline feature/payments -10

Use 'git log --oneline --grep="fix"' to filter commits by message content.

Cherry-pick a single commit

Apply the specified commit to your current branch. Git creates a new commit with the same changes but a different hash.

$ git cherry-pick abc1234

Cherry-pick a range of commits

Apply all commits in the range, excluding abc1234 and including def5678. Use three dots (abc1234...def5678) to include both endpoints.

$ git cherry-pick abc1234..def5678

Range cherry-pick applies commits in order. If any commit conflicts, the entire operation pauses until you resolve it.

Resolve cherry-pick conflicts

If a cherry-pick causes conflicts, resolve them, stage the changes, and continue. Use --abort to cancel the entire cherry-pick operation.

$ git status # Fix conflicts in listed files git add . git cherry-pick --continue

Cherry-pick without committing

Stage the changes from multiple commits without creating individual commits. This lets you combine them into a single commit with your own message.

$ git cherry-pick --no-commit abc1234 def5678

This is useful when you want to cherry-pick several small fixes and bundle them into one clean commit.

Track cherry-pick origin with -x

The -x flag appends '(cherry picked from commit abc1234)' to the commit message, making it easy to trace the original source.

$ git cherry-pick -x abc1234

Full Script

full-script.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# cherry-pick-workflow.sh — Cherry-pick commits between branches
set -euo pipefail

SOURCE_BRANCH="${1:?Usage: $0 <source-branch> [commit-hash...]}"
shift
COMMITS=("$@")

CURRENT_BRANCH=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)
echo "Current branch: $CURRENT_BRANCH"
echo "Source branch:  $SOURCE_BRANCH"

if [ ${#COMMITS[@]} -eq 0 ]; then
  echo ""
  echo "=== Recent commits on $SOURCE_BRANCH ==="
  git log --oneline "$SOURCE_BRANCH" -15
  echo ""
  echo "No commit hashes provided. Re-run with specific hashes:"
  echo "  $0 $SOURCE_BRANCH <hash1> <hash2> ..."
  exit 0
fi

echo ""
echo "Commits to cherry-pick:"
for HASH in "${COMMITS[@]}"; do
  echo "  $(git log --oneline -1 "$HASH")"
done

echo ""
read -rp "Cherry-pick these commits with -x flag? (y/N) " confirm
if [[ "$confirm" =~ ^[Yy]$ ]]; then
  for HASH in "${COMMITS[@]}"; do
    echo "Cherry-picking $HASH..."
    git cherry-pick -x "$HASH" || {
      echo "Conflict detected. Resolve and run: git cherry-pick --continue"
      exit 1
    }
  done
  echo ""
  echo "All commits cherry-picked successfully."
  git log --oneline -${#COMMITS[@]}
fi

FAQ

Discussion

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#!/usr/bin/env bash # cherry-pick-workflow.sh — Cherry-pick commits between branches set -euo pipefail SOURCE_BRANCH="${1:?Usage: $0 <source-branch> [commit-hash...]}" shift COMMITS=("$@") CURRENT_BRANCH=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD) echo "Current branch: $CURRENT_BRANCH" echo "Source branch: $SOURCE_BRANCH" if [ ${#COMMITS[@]} -eq 0 ]; then echo "" echo "=== Recent commits on $SOURCE_BRANCH ===" git log --oneline "$SOURCE_BRANCH" -15 echo "" echo "No commit hashes provided. Re-run with specific hashes:" echo " $0 $SOURCE_BRANCH <hash1> <hash2> ..." exit 0 fi echo "" echo "Commits to cherry-pick:" for HASH in "${COMMITS[@]}"; do echo " $(git log --oneline -1 "$HASH")" done echo "" read -rp "Cherry-pick these commits with -x flag? (y/N) " confirm if [[ "$confirm" =~ ^[Yy]$ ]]; then for HASH in "${COMMITS[@]}"; do echo "Cherry-picking $HASH..." git cherry-pick -x "$HASH" || { echo "Conflict detected. Resolve and run: git cherry-pick --continue" exit 1 } done echo "" echo "All commits cherry-picked successfully." git log --oneline -${#COMMITS[@]} fi