[git] git cherry-pick says "...38c74d is a merge but no -m option was given"

Simplify. Cherry-pick the commits. Don't cherry-pick the merge.

Here's a rewrite of the accepted answer that ideally clarifies the advantages/risks of possible approaches:

You're trying to cherry pick fd9f578, which was a merge with two parents.

Instead of cherry-picking a merge, the simplest thing is to cherry pick the commit(s) you actually want from each branch in the merge.

Since you've already merged, it's likely all your desired commits are in your list. Cherry-pick them directly and you don't need to mess with the merge commit.

explanation

The way a cherry-pick works is by taking the diff that a changeset represents (the difference between the working tree at that point and the working tree of its parent), and applying the changeset to your current branch.

If a commit has two or more parents, as is the case with a merge, that commit also represents two or more diffs. The error occurs because of the uncertainty over which diff should apply.

alternatives

If you determine you need to include the merge vs cherry-picking the related commits, you have two options:

  1. (More complicated and obscure; also discards history) you can indicate which parent should apply.

    • Use the -m option to do so. For example, git cherry-pick -m 1 fd9f578 will use the first parent listed in the merge as the base.

    • Also consider that when you cherry-pick a merge commit, it collapses all the changes made in the parent you didn't specify to -m into that one commit. You lose all their history, and glom together all their diffs. Your call.

  2. (Simpler and more familiar; preserves history) you can use git merge instead of git cherry-pick.

    • As is usual with git merge, it will attempt to apply all commits that exist on the branch you are merging, and list them individually in your git log.

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