Copy changes with cherry-pick

Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2022 - Azure DevOps Server 2019

Visual Studio 2019 | Visual Studio 2022

Git cherry-pick copies the changes from one or more source branch commits to a target branch. Unlike merge or rebase, cherry-pick lets you select specific source branch commits. For each source branch commit that you cherry-pick, Git creates a corresponding commit on the target branch.

You can cherry-pick to tackle these common tasks:

• Deploy a specific feature from one branch to another.
• Copy work that you committed on the wrong branch.
• Apply a bug fix on multiple branches.

For an overview of the Git workflow, see Azure Repos Git tutorial.

Prerequisites

Category	Requirements
Project access	Member of a project.
Permissions	- View code in private projects: At least Basic access. - Clone or contribute to code in private projects: Member of the Contributors security group or corresponding permissions in the project. - Set branch or repository permissions: Manage permissions permissions for the branch or repository. - Change default branch: Edit policies permissions for the repository. - Import a repository: Member of the Project Administrators security group or Git project-level Create repository permission set to Allow. For more information, see Set Git repository permissions.
Services	Repos enabled.
Tools	Optional. Use az repos commands: Azure DevOps CLI.

Note

In public projects, users with Stakeholder access have full access to Azure Repos, including viewing, cloning, and contributing to code.

Cherry-pick a commit

Browser

Azure Repos

Azure Repos provides limited support for cherry-picking, and only for the purpose of creating a pull request to apply a hotfix on a target branch. For more information, see Improving Azure DevOps cherry-picking.

The Cherry-pick option in the pull request menu in Azure Repos does the following:

1. Creates a new topic branch from the pull request's target branch.
2. Cherry-picks all changes from the pull request's source branch to the new topic branch.
3. Prompts you to create a new pull request to merge the new topic branch into another target branch.

For a step-by-step tutorial, see Create a new pull request with cherry-pick.

GitHub

The GitHub web interface doesn't support cherry-picking, but GitHub Desktop does. For step-by-step guidance on how to cherry-pick in GitHub Desktop, see Cherry-picking a commit.

Visual Studio 2022

Visual Studio 2022 provides a Git version control experience by using the Git menu, Git Changes, and through context menus in Solution Explorer. Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8 also offers the Team Explorer Git user interface. For more information, see the Visual Studio 2019 - Team Explorer tab.

1. Choose Git > Manage Branches to open the Git Repository window.

   

2. In the Git Repository window, right-click the target branch and choose Checkout.

   

3. In the Branches view, right-click the source branch and choose View History to open a commit History tab.

   

4. In the History tab, right-click the commit you want to cherry-pick and choose Cherry-Pick. Visual Studio doesn't support cherry-picking more than one commit at a time, so you'll need to repeat this step for each commit that you want to cherry-pick.

   

   Visual Studio creates a new target branch commit that contains the changes from the cherry-picked commit. If the cherry-pick operation doesn't complete successfully, Visual Studio will notify you.

Visual Studio 2019 - Git menu

Visual Studio 2019 provides a Git version control experience by using the Git menu, Git Changes, and through context menus in Solution Explorer.

1. Choose Git > Manage Branches to open the Git Repository window.

   

2. In the Git Repository window, right-click the target branch and choose Checkout.

   

3. In the Branches view, right-click the source branch and choose View History to open a commit History tab.

   

4. In the History tab, right-click the commit you want to cherry-pick and choose Cherry-Pick. Visual Studio doesn't support cherry-picking more than one commit at a time, so you'll need to repeat this step for each commit that you want to cherry-pick.

   

   Visual Studio creates a new target branch commit that contains the changes from the cherry-picked commit. If the cherry-pick operation doesn't complete successfully, Visual Studio will notify you.

Visual Studio 2019 - Team Explorer

Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8 and later versions provides a Git version control experience while maintaining the Team Explorer Git user interface. To use Team Explorer, uncheck Tools > Options > Preview Features > New Git user experience from the menu bar. You can use Git features from either interface interchangeably.

1. In Team Explorer, select the Home button and choose Branches.

   

2. In the Branches view, right-click the target branch and choose Checkout.

   

3. In the Branches view, right-click the source branch and choose View History to open a commit History tab.

   

4. In the History tab, right-click the commit you want to cherry-pick and choose Cherry-Pick. Visual Studio doesn't support cherry-picking more than one commit at a time, so you'll need to repeat this step for each commit that you want to cherry-pick.

   

   Visual Studio creates a new target branch commit that contains the changes from the cherry-picked commit. If the cherry-pick operation doesn't complete successfully, Visual Studio will notify you.

Git Command Line

1. Use the git log command to list source branch commits. The --oneline flag abbreviates the commit info.

   Console

   git log --oneline <source branch>
   

   Git lists the most recent commits first. Each commit ID is a partial SHA-1 hash that uniquely identifies the commit. For example:

   Output

   e745d06 (HEAD -> add-network-controller) Add a test initialization class
   a89f48e (origin/add-network-controller) Add fiber optic transceiver test
   31da50b Add network switch test
   e74baa2 (origin/main, origin/HEAD, test-fiber-optic-transmitter, main) Add readme content
   0c14391 Add readme file
   32e3946 Add project files.
   

2. Make a note of the ID of the commit that you want to cherry-pick.

3. Check out the target branch, if it isn't already checked out.

   Console

   git checkout <target branch> 
   

4. Commit, stash, or discard any uncommitted changes.

5. To cherry-pick a single commit:

   Console

   git cherry-pick <commit ID> 
   

   To cherry-pick multiple commits, separate the commit IDs with spaces. The commits will be applied in the order that you enter them:

   Console

   git cherry-pick <commit1 ID> <commit2 ID> <commit3 ID> 
   

   To cherry-pick an inclusive range of commits, use the ^.. dot range notation:

   Console

   git cherry-pick <oldest-commit ID>^..<newest-commit ID> 
   

   When you cherry-pick multiple commits, the default cherry-pick command creates a corresponding sequence of new target branch commits. To tell Git to stage and not commit the target branch changes, use the -n flag:

   Console

   git cherry-pick -n <commit1 ID> <commit2 ID>
   

   Then, you can manually create a single commit to contain all changes from the cherry-pick operation.

Git will notify you if there are merge conflicts during the cherry-pick operation. You can either resolve the conflicts and then run git cherry-pick --continue, or run git cherry-pick --abort to undo the cherry-pick operation.

Next steps

Undo changes

Related articles

• New to Git repos? Learn more
• Apply changes with rebase
• Update code with fetch, merge, and pull