Cherry-Picking and Force Updating with Git: A Quick Guide

Learn how to cherry-pick multiple commits from one branch to another and force update the target branch, resolving conflicts by favoring the changes from the cherry-picked commits.

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Introduction

Cherry-picking in Git allows you to apply specific commits from one branch to another. However, conflicts can arise, making the process tedious. This guide shows you how to automate cherry-picking and force update a branch while resolving conflicts by choosing changes from the cherry-picked commits.

Steps to Cherry-Pick and Force Update

1. Checkout the Target Branch:

   git checkout target_branch
   

2. Cherry-Pick Commits with Conflict Resolution:

   • Consecutive Commits:

     git cherry-pick commit1^..commit3 -X theirs
     

   • Non-Consecutive Commits:

     git cherry-pick commit1 -X theirs
     git cherry-pick commit2 -X theirs
     git cherry-pick commit3 -X theirs
     

3. Force Push to Remote Branch:

   git push origin target_branch --force
   

Example Script for Automation

If you have a list of commits, you can automate the process with a script:

# Define branches
SOURCE_BRANCH="source_branch"
TARGET_BRANCH="target_branch"

# Checkout the target branch
git checkout $TARGET_BRANCH

# List of commits to cherry-pick
COMMITS=("commit1" "commit2" "commit3")

# Cherry-pick each commit with conflict resolution
for commit in "${COMMITS[@]}"
do
    git cherry-pick $commit -X theirs
done

# Force push to the remote branch
git push origin $TARGET_BRANCH --force

Conclusion

By using the -X theirs option during cherry-pick, you can automate conflict resolution, making your workflow smoother and more efficient. This approach helps you maintain a clean history and reduces manual conflict resolution efforts.

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