Git cherry-picking

Git is my 'go-to' version control tool for a long time. I switched from SVN & TFVS (Team Foundation Version Control) a long time ago and never looked back. One feature that I used sometimes in TFVC was the cherry-pick feature but since I started using GIT I never used cherry-pick anymore. Until today...

What is cherry-picking?

Cherry-picking refers to the process of selecting a specific, individual commit from one branch and applying it to another. Unlike merging or rebasing entire branches, cherry-picking lets you choose exactly which changes you want to incorporate.

Think of it as picking cherries from a tree (hence the name): instead of harvesting all the fruit, you carefully select only the ripest, most desirable ones.

When to use cherry-picking?

I have some bad memories from using cherry-picking in TFVC as it was used a lot as a poor mans alternative to a good versioning strategy.

But there are some scenarios where cherry-picking can be useful:

1. Backporting fixes: When you need to apply a bug fix from your development branch to a stable release branch
2. Recovering lost work: When commits were made on the wrong branch and need to be moved
3. Selective feature adoption: When you want to implement only specific parts of a feature developed in another branch
4. Undoing changes: When you need to revert a specific commit without affecting subsequent work

In my case I was preparing some demos for a training. Each demo started from the same codebase and was in a separate Git branch to demonstrate a specific feature. So each branch had build up it’s own history over time with no goal to merge them back. 

I updated the NuGet packages and other dependencies for one branch and now wanted to do the same thing for the other branches without merging the full list of changes from every branch.

That sounded like a good scenario for the cherry-pick feature to me!

Basic cherry-pick Syntax in GIT

The basic command structure is simple:

git cherry-pick <commit-hash>

This applies the changes introduced by the specified commit to your current branch, creating a new commit with a new hash but the same commit message.

A walkthrough

Now that we now the basics, let me walk you through the steps to apply a commit to multiple branches:

Step 1 - Identify the commit hash:

• Use the following command to find the commit hash you want to apply:

git log

• Copy the hash of the desired commit.

• OR use the Visual Studio UI to get the commit id
• Click on Git –> View branch history
• Right click on the commit from the Local History and choose View Commit Details

• On the Commit detail screen click on the … and click on Copy Commit ID

 

Step 2 – Switch to the target branch.

• Check out the branch where you want to apply the commit:

git checkout <branch-name>

Step 3 - Apply the Commit

• Use the cherry-pick command to apply the commit:  

git cherry-pick <commit-hash>

If there are conflicts during the cherry-pick, Git will pause and allow you to resolve them.

After resolving, run:

  git cherry-pick --continue

Remark: Visual Studio (Code) has direct integration for cherry picking so you could do this all through the UI if that