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git-cherry(1)

GIT-CHERRY(1)Git ManualGIT-CHERRY(1)

git-cherry - Find commits yet to be applied to upstream

git cherry [-v] [<upstream> [<head> [<limit>]]]

Determine whether there are commits in <head>..<upstream> that are equivalent to those in the range <limit>..<head>.

The equivalence test is based on the diff, after removing whitespace and line numbers. git-cherry therefore detects when commits have been "copied" by means of git-cherry-pick(1), git-am(1) or git-rebase(1).

Outputs the SHA1 of every commit in <limit>..<head>, prefixed with - for commits that have an equivalent in <upstream>, and + for commits that do not.

-v

Show the commit subjects next to the SHA1s.

<upstream>

Upstream branch to search for equivalent commits. Defaults to the upstream branch of HEAD.

<head>

Working branch; defaults to HEAD.

<limit>

Do not report commits up to (and including) limit.

git-cherry is frequently used in patch-based workflows (see gitworkflows(7)) to determine if a series of patches has been applied by the upstream maintainer. In such a workflow you might create and send a topic branch like this:

$ git checkout -b topic origin/master# work and create some commits$ git format-patch origin/master$ git send-email ... 00*

Later, you can see whether your changes have been applied by saying (still on topic):

$ git fetch  # update your notion of origin/master$ git cherry -v

In a situation where topic consisted of three commits, and the maintainer applied two of them, the situation might look like:

$ git log --graph --oneline --decorate --boundary origin/master...topic* 7654321 (origin/master) upstream tip commit[... snip some other commits ...]* cccc111 cherry-pick of C* aaaa111 cherry-pick of A[... snip a lot more that has happened ...]| * cccc000 (topic) commit C| * bbbb000 commit B| * aaaa000 commit A|/o 1234567 branch point

In such cases, git-cherry shows a concise summary of what has yet to be applied:

$ git cherry origin/master topic- cccc000... commit C+ bbbb000... commit B- aaaa000... commit A

Here, we see that the commits A and C (marked with -) can be dropped from your topic branch when you rebase it on top of origin/master, while the commit B (marked with +) still needs to be kept so that it will be sent to be applied to origin/master.

The optional <limit> is useful in cases where your topic is based on other work that is not in upstream. Expanding on the previous example, this might look like:

$ git log --graph --oneline --decorate --boundary origin/master...topic* 7654321 (origin/master) upstream tip commit[... snip some other commits ...]* cccc111 cherry-pick of C* aaaa111 cherry-pick of A[... snip a lot more that has happened ...]| * cccc000 (topic) commit C| * bbbb000 commit B| * aaaa000 commit A| * 0000fff (base) unpublished stuff F[... snip ...]| * 0000aaa unpublished stuff A|/o 1234567 merge-base between upstream and topic

By specifying base as the limit, you can avoid listing commits between base and topic:

$ git cherry origin/master topic base- cccc000... commit C+ bbbb000... commit B- aaaa000... commit A

git-patch-id(1)

Part of the git(1) suite

01/11/2025Git 2.39.5