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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | SEQUENCER SUBCOMMANDS | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON |
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GIT-CHERRY-PICK(1) Git Manual GIT-CHERRY-PICK(1)
git-cherry-pick - Apply the changes introduced by some existing
commits
git cherry-pick [--edit] [-n] [-m <parent-number>] [-s] [-x] [--ff]
[-S[<keyid>]] <commit>...
git cherry-pick (--continue | --skip | --abort | --quit)
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.
<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 will cause the cherry-pick to
fail. To force the inclusion of those commits, use
--empty=keep.
--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.
--empty=(drop|keep|stop)
How to handle commits being cherry-picked that are redundant
with changes already in the current history.
drop
The commit will be dropped.
keep
The commit will be kept. Implies --allow-empty.
stop
The cherry-pick will stop when the commit is applied,
allowing you to examine the commit. This is the default
behavior.
Note that --empty=drop and --empty=stop only specify how to
handle a commit that was not initially empty, but rather
became empty due to a previous commit. Commits that were
initially empty will still cause the cherry-pick to fail
unless one of --empty=keep or --allow-empty are specified.
--keep-redundant-commits
Deprecated synonym for --empty=keep.
--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.
--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.
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.
git-revert(1)
Part of the git(1) suite
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 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-07.) 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 2.51.0.rc1 2025-08-07 GIT-CHERRY-PICK(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1), git-cherry(1), git-revert(1), gitworkflows(7)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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