Is it possible to cherry-pick a commit from another git repository?

I'm working with a git repository that needs a commit from another git repository that knows nothing of the first.

Typically I would cherry-pick using the HEAD@{x} in the reflog, but because this .git knows nothing of this reflog entry (different physical directory), how can I cherry-pick this, or can I?

I'm using git-svn. My first branch is using git-svn of the trunk of a Subversion repo, and the next branch is using git-svn on a Subversion branch.

The answer, as given, is to use format-patch but since the question was how to cherry-pick from another folder, here is a piece of code to do just that:

$ git --git-dir=../<some_other_repo>/.git \
format-patch -k -1 --stdout <commit SHA> | \
git am -3 -k

Explanation from Cong Ma comment Aug 28 '14

> git format-patch command creates a patch from some_other_repo's commit > specified by its SHA (-1 for one single commit alone). This patch is > piped to git am, which applies the patch locally (-3 means trying the > three-way merge if the patch fails to apply cleanly).

You'll need to add the other repository as a remote, then fetch its changes. From there you see the commit and you can cherry-pick it.

Like that:

git remote add other https://example.link/repository.git
git fetch other

Now you have all the information to simply do git cherry-pick.

When done, you may want to remove the remote again, if you don't need it any more, with

git remote remove other

More info about working with remotes here: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Basics-Working-with-Remotes

Here's an example of the remote-fetch-merge.

cd /home/you/projectA
git remote add projectB /home/you/projectB
git fetch projectB

Then you can:

git cherry-pick <first_commit>..<last_commit>

or you could even merge the whole branch(only if you really need to merge everything)

git merge projectB/master

You can do it, but it requires two steps. Here's how:

git fetch <remote-git-url> <branch> && git cherry-pick FETCH_HEAD

Replace <remote-git-url> with the url or path to the repository you want cherry-pick from.

Replace <branch> with the branch or tag name you want to cherry-pick from the remote repository.

You can replace FETCH_HEAD with a git SHA from the branch.

Updated: modified based on @pkalinow's feedback.

Here are the steps to add a remote, fetch branches, and cherry-pick a commit

# Cloning our fork
$ git clone [email protected]:ifad/rest-client.git

# Adding (as "endel") the repo from we want to cherry-pick
$ git remote add endel git://github.com/endel/rest-client.git

# Fetch their branches
$ git fetch endel

# List their commits
$ git log endel/master

# Cherry-pick the commit we need
$ git cherry-pick 97fedac

Source: https://coderwall.com/p/sgpksw

See How to create and apply a patch with Git. (From the wording of your question, I assumed that this other repository is for an entirely different codebase. If it's a repository for the same code base, you should add it as a remote as suggested by @CharlesB. Even if it is for another code base, I guess you could still add it as a remote, but you might not want to get the entire branch into your repository...)

You can do it in one line as following. Hope you are in git repository which need the cherry-picked change and you have checked out to correct branch.

git fetch ssh://[email protected]:7999/repo_to_get_it_from.git branchToPickFrom && git cherry-pick 02a197e9533
# 

git fetch [branch URL] [Branch to cherry-pick from] && git cherry-pick [commit ID]

Yes. Fetch the repository and then cherry-pick from the remote branch.

Assuming A is the repo you want to cherry-pick from, and B is the one you want to cherry-pick to, you can do this by adding </path/to/repo/A/>/.git/objects to </path/to/repo/B>/.git/objects/info/alternates. Create this alternates files if it does not exist.

This will make repo B access all git objects from repo A, and will make cherry-pick work for you.

For the case, that the commit has to be "cherry-picked" for some localized validations. It could also be, for same repository checkout, but with local commits (i.e. not pushed yet to server).

E.g.

• repo1 similar to repo2
• repo1 has branch b1 - HEAD progressed by 2 commits (including commit_x) locally.
• repo2 has branch bb1 - required to cherry-pick commit_x.

For this,

> $ cd repo2

> repo2 $ git fetch

> repo2 $ git cherry-pick

In the above case, the commit_x will now be identifiable and picked up (by the aid of fetch).

My situation was that I have a bare repo that the team pushes to, and a clone of that sitting right next to it. This set of lines in a Makefile work correctly for me:

git reset --hard
git remote update --prune
git pull --rebase --all
git cherry-pick -n remotes/origin/$(BRANCH)

By keeping the master of the bare repo up to date, we are able to cherry-pick a proposed change published to the bare repo. We also have a (more complicated) way to cherry-pick multiple braches for consolidated review and testing.

If "knows nothing" means "can't be used as a remote", then this doesn't help, but this SO question came up as I was googling around to come up with this workflow so I thought I'd contribute back.

If you want to cherry-pick multiple commits for a given file until you reach a given commit, then use the following.

# Directory from which to cherry-pick
GIT_DIR=...
# Pick changes only for this file
FILE_PATH=...
# Apply changes from this commit
FIST_COMMIT=master
# Apply changes until you reach this commit
LAST_COMMIT=...

for sha in $(git --git-dir=$GIT_DIR log --reverse --topo-order --format=%H $LAST_COMMIT_SHA..master -- $FILE_PATH ) ; do 
  git --git-dir=$GIT_DIR  format-patch -k -1 --stdout $sha -- $FILE_PATH | 
    git am -3 -k
done