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Cherry-pick changes (FREE ALL)

In Git, cherry-picking is taking a single commit from one branch and adding it as the latest commit on another branch. The rest of the commits in the source branch are not added to the target. You should cherry-pick a commit when you need the change contained in a single commit, but you can't or don't want to pull the entire contents of that branch into another.

You can use the GitLab UI to cherry-pick single commits or entire merge requests. You can even cherry-pick a commit from a fork of your project.

NOTE: Support for tracking commits cherry-picked from the command line is tracked in this issue.

Cherry-pick example

In this example of cherry-picking, a Git repository has two branches: develop and main. This example shows a cherry-picked commit from one branch being added to another:

gitGraph
 commit id: "A"
 branch develop
 commit id:"B"
 checkout main
 commit id:"C"
 checkout develop
 commit id:"D"
 checkout main
 commit id:"E"
 cherry-pick id:"B"
 commit id:"G"
 checkout develop
 commit id:"H"

In this example, a cherry-pick of commit B from the develop branch is added after commit E in the main branch.

Commit G is added after the cherry-pick.

Cherry-pick all changes from a merge request

After a merge request is merged, you can cherry-pick all changes introduced by the merge request:

  1. On the left sidebar, at the top, select Search GitLab ({search}) to find your project.

  2. Select Code > Merge requests, and find your merge request.

  3. Scroll to the merge request reports section, and find the Merged by report.

  4. In the upper-right corner, select Cherry-pick:

    Cherry-pick merge request

  5. In the modal window, select the project and branch to cherry-pick into.

  6. Optional. Select Start a new merge request with these changes.

  7. Select Cherry-pick.

Cherry-pick a single commit

You can cherry-pick a single commit from multiple locations in your GitLab project.

From a project's commit list

To cherry-pick a commit from the list of all commits for a project:

  1. On the left sidebar, at the top, select Search GitLab ({search}) to find your project.
  2. Select Code > Commits.
  3. Select the title of the commit you want to cherry-pick.
  4. In the upper-right corner, select Options > Cherry-pick to show the cherry-pick modal.
  5. In the modal window, select the project and branch to cherry-pick into.
  6. Optional. Select Start a new merge request with these changes.
  7. Select Cherry-pick.

From a merge request

You can cherry-pick commits from any merge request in your project, regardless of whether the merge request is open or closed. To cherry-pick a commit from the list of commits included in a merge request:

  1. On the left sidebar, at the top, select Search GitLab ({search}) to find your project.
  2. Select Code > Merge requests, and find your merge request.
  3. In the merge request's secondary menu, select Commits to display the commit details page.
  4. Select the title of the commit you want to cherry-pick.
  5. In the upper-right corner, select Options > Cherry-pick to show the cherry-pick modal.
  6. In the modal window, select the project and branch to cherry-pick into.
  7. Optional. Select Start a new merge request with these changes.
  8. Select Cherry-pick.

From the file view of a repository

You can cherry-pick from the list of previous commits affecting an individual file when you view that file in your project's Git repository:

  1. On the left sidebar, at the top, select Search GitLab ({search}) to find your project.
  2. Select Code > Repository and go to the file changed by the commit.
  3. Select History, then select the title of the commit you want to cherry-pick.
  4. In the upper-right corner, select Options > Cherry-pick to show the cherry-pick modal.
  5. In the modal window, select the project and branch to cherry-pick into.
  6. Optional. Select Start a new merge request with these changes.
  7. Select Cherry-pick.

Cherry-pick into a project

You can cherry-pick merge requests from the same project, or forks of the same project, from the GitLab user interface:

  1. In the merge request's secondary menu, select Commits to display the commit details page.
  2. In the upper-right corner, select Options > Cherry-pick to show the cherry-pick modal.
  3. In Pick into project and Pick into branch, select the destination project and branch: Cherry-pick commit
  4. Optional. Select Start a new merge request if you're ready to create a merge request.
  5. Select Cherry-pick.

View system notes for cherry-picked commits

When you cherry-pick a merge commit in the GitLab UI or API, GitLab adds a system note to the related merge request thread in the format {cherry-pick-commit} [USER] picked the changes into the branch [BRANCHNAME] with commit** [SHA] [DATE]:

Cherry-pick tracking in merge request timeline

The system note crosslinks the new commit and the existing merge request. Each deployment's list of associated merge requests includes cherry-picked merge commits.

Related topics

  • Use the Commits API to add custom messages to changes when you use the API to cherry-pick.

Troubleshooting

Selecting a different parent commit when cherry-picking

When you cherry-pick a merge commit in the GitLab UI, the mainline is always the first parent. Use the command line to cherry-pick with a different mainline.

Here's a quick example to cherry-pick a merge commit using the second parent as the mainline:

git cherry-pick -m 2 7a39eb0