How to cherry-pick a range of commits and merge them into another branch?

How to Cherry-Pick a Range of Commits and Merge Them into Another Branch

Learn the precise steps to select and apply a sequence of commits from one Git branch to another, ensuring a clean and controlled integration process.

Cherry-picking in Git allows you to select individual commits from anywhere in your repository and apply them to your current HEAD. This is particularly useful when you need to bring specific changes from one branch to another without merging the entire branch. This article will guide you through the process of cherry-picking a range of commits and integrating them into a target branch, providing a clean and controlled way to manage your codebase.

Understanding Cherry-Picking Ranges

While git cherry-pick typically applies a single commit, Git also provides the flexibility to apply a sequence of commits. This is done by specifying a range of commit hashes. The syntax for a range is commit_hash_start..commit_hash_end. It's crucial to understand that commit_hash_start is excluded, and commit_hash_end is included in the cherry-pick operation. If you want to include commit_hash_start, you would use commit_hash_start^..commit_hash_end.

Identifying the Commits to Cherry-Pick

Before you can cherry-pick, you need to identify the exact commits you want to transfer. You can use git log to view the commit history of the source branch. Pay attention to the commit hashes and the order of commits. Visualizing the history with tools like gitk or git log --graph can also be helpful.

git log --oneline --decorate --graph --all

Use git log to visualize the commit history and identify the desired commits.

Visualizing commit history for cherry-picking.

The Cherry-Picking Process

Once you have identified your commit range, navigate to your target branch and execute the git cherry-pick command with the specified range. Remember the start^..end syntax if you want to include the starting commit.

1. Step 1

Switch to your target branch: This is the branch where you want to apply the cherry-picked commits.

2. Step 2

Identify the commit range: Use git log on the source branch to find the start_commit_hash and end_commit_hash.

3. Step 3

Execute the cherry-pick command: If you want to include start_commit_hash and end_commit_hash, use git cherry-pick start_commit_hash^..end_commit_hash. Otherwise, if start_commit_hash is the commit before your desired range, use git cherry-pick start_commit_hash..end_commit_hash.

4. Step 4

Resolve any conflicts: If conflicts occur, resolve them manually, add the resolved files (git add .), and then continue the cherry-pick (git cherry-pick --continue).

5. Step 5

Verify the changes: After successful cherry-picking, use git log on the target branch to confirm the commits have been applied correctly.

# Switch to the target branch
git checkout target-branch

# Cherry-pick a range of commits (excluding START_COMMIT_HASH)
git cherry-pick START_COMMIT_HASH..END_COMMIT_HASH

# Cherry-pick a range of commits (including START_COMMIT_HASH)
git cherry-pick START_COMMIT_HASH^..END_COMMIT_HASH

Commands for switching branches and performing a range cherry-pick.