Git cherry-pick

git cherry-pick allows you to append arbitrary Git commits to the current HEAD based on their hash value. Cherry-picking is selecting a commit from one branch and applying it to another, for example:

$ git checkout 3.10
$ git cherry-pick 61de025
[3.10 b600967] Fix bug #17
 Date: Thu Sep 15 11:17:35 2022 +0200
 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+)

Thereby git cherry-pick can be used with different options:

--edit, -e

does not take over the existing commit message but allows you to create your own commit message for this cherry-pick.

--no-commit, -n

does not create a new commit but moves the contents of the commit to the working directory.

--signoff, -s

adds a signature line with signed-off-by at the end of the commit message.

git cherry-pick also accepts options to resolve merge conflicts, including --abort, --continue and --quit.

git cherry-pick can be useful for reverting changes, for example if a commit was accidentally made to the wrong branch, you can switch to the branch where the change was supposed to be made and then cherry-pick the commit to that branch.

However, cherry-picking usually results in duplicate commits, and in many cases we prefer to use git merges. Nevertheless, git cherry-pick can be very suitable for some scenarios, for example Release branches workflows.