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git rebase · cherry-pick: A Practical Guide

A practitioner-focused walkthrough of rebase and cherry-pick—from cleaning up commit history and syncing branches to applying specific commits.

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Contents
  1. rebase vs merge
  2. Basic rebase
  3. interactive rebase — cleaning up commits
  4. squash example — cleaning up WIP commits
  5. cherry-pick — applying specific commits
  6. Practical patterns
  7. Caveats

rebase vs merge

mergerebase
HistoryCreates a merge commit; keeps the branchRewritten into a linear history
Conflict resolutionOncePer commit
Public branchesRecommendedDo not use
Local workFineRecommended

Basic rebase

Bash
# Apply the latest main onto your feature branch
git checkout feature/my-feature
git rebase main

# If a conflict occurs
# 1. Edit files to resolve the conflict
# 2. git add the resolved files
# 3. git rebase --continue

# Abort and restore the original state
git rebase --abort

interactive rebase — cleaning up commits

Bash
# Edit the last 3 commits
git rebase -i HEAD~3

Commands shown in the editor:

CODE
pick a1b2c3 first commit
pick d4e5f6 second commit
pick g7h8i9 third commit

Change pick to one of the following:

CommandAction
pickKeep as-is
rewordEdit the commit message
editEdit the commit contents
squashFold into the previous commit (combine messages)
fixupFold into the previous commit (discard this message)
dropDelete the commit

squash example — cleaning up WIP commits

Bash
git rebase -i HEAD~4

# In the editor:
pick a1b2c3 feat: login feature
fixup d4e5f6 wip
fixup g7h8i9 wip 2
reword h0i1j2 fix: token refresh bug

Result: 4 commits are cleaned up into 2.

cherry-pick — applying specific commits

Bash
# Find the commit hash
git log --oneline feature/hotfix

# Apply a single commit
git cherry-pick a1b2c3

# Apply a range
git cherry-pick a1b2c3..g7h8i9

# Stage only, without committing
git cherry-pick -n a1b2c3

# After resolving conflicts
git cherry-pick --continue

# Abort
git cherry-pick --abort

Practical patterns

Bash
# Apply a hotfix to both main and the release branch
git checkout main
git cherry-pick fix-commit-hash

git checkout release/v2.0
git cherry-pick fix-commit-hash

# Clean up commits before opening a PR
git fetch origin
git rebase origin/main
git rebase -i origin/main

Caveats

  • Never rebase commits that have already been pushed — it breaks collaborators' history
  • If you must force-push, use git push --force-with-lease (rejected if someone else pushed in the meantime)
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