Why cherry-pick is useful in Git - See It in Action

Why cherry-pick is useful

📖 Scenario: You are working on a software project with multiple branches. Sometimes, you want to take a specific change from one branch and apply it to another without merging all changes. This is where git cherry-pick helps.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to use git cherry-pick to copy a single commit from one branch to another.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a new branch called feature from main

Make a commit on feature with a specific message

Switch back to main branch

Use git cherry-pick to apply the commit from feature to main

Show the commit log on main to confirm the cherry-pick

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Cherry-pick is useful when you want to apply a specific fix or feature from one branch to another without merging all changes. For example, applying a bug fix from a development branch to the stable release branch.

💼 Career

Understanding cherry-pick helps you manage code changes efficiently in team projects, especially when working with multiple branches and releases.

1

Create a new branch and make a commit

Create a new branch called feature from main and switch to it. Then create a file named feature.txt with the content New feature added and commit it with the message Add new feature.

Git

# Create and switch to feature branch
# Create feature.txt with content
# Commit with message 'Add new feature'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git checkout -b feature main to create and switch to the new branch.

Use echo to create the file and git commit -m to commit.

2

Switch back to main branch

Switch back to the main branch using the correct git checkout command.

Git

git checkout -b feature main
echo 'New feature added' > feature.txt
git add feature.txt
git commit -m 'Add new feature'
# Switch back to main branch
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git checkout main to switch branches.

3

Cherry-pick the commit from feature branch

Use git cherry-pick with the commit hash from the feature branch to apply that commit to the main branch. First, find the commit hash by running git log feature -1 --pretty=format:%H. Then use git cherry-pick <commit-hash>.

Git

git checkout -b feature main
echo 'New feature added' > feature.txt
git add feature.txt
git commit -m 'Add new feature'
git checkout main
# Find commit hash from feature branch
# Cherry-pick that commit onto main
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git log feature -1 --pretty=format:%H to get the latest commit hash from feature.

Then use git cherry-pick <commit-hash> to apply it.

4

Show the commit log on main branch

Run git log -1 --oneline on the main branch to display the latest commit message and confirm that the cherry-pick was successful.

Git

git checkout -b feature main
echo 'New feature added' > feature.txt
git add feature.txt
git commit -m 'Add new feature'
git checkout main
commit_hash=$(git log feature -1 --pretty=format:%H)
git cherry-pick $commit_hash
# Show the latest commit log on main
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git log -1 --oneline to see the latest commit message.