Cherry-pick Hotfix to Develop

When to Use

• A hotfix was pushed directly to production
• The fix is missing from develop (and possibly staging)
• You need to ensure the fix is included in future releases

Quick Steps

1. Identify the missing commits

bash
1# Show commits in production that are NOT in develop
2git log --oneline develop..production

2. Cherry-pick to develop

bash
1git checkout develop
2git pull origin develop
3git cherry-pick <commit-hash>
4git push origin develop

3. Verify

bash
1# Confirm the commit is now in develop
2git branch --contains <commit-hash>

Optional: Also add to staging immediately

When to cherry-pick to staging:

• User explicitly asks to also add to staging
• User mentions the fix is urgent or needed in staging
• Context suggests staging needs the fix before the next develop merge

Default behavior: Only cherry-pick to develop unless user requests staging or context indicates it's needed.

If uncertain: Ask the user: "Should I also cherry-pick this to staging, or is develop sufficient?"

If staging is needed:

bash
1git checkout staging
2git pull origin staging
3git cherry-pick <commit-hash>
4git push origin staging

Troubleshooting

Cherry-pick conflict

If there are conflicts during cherry-pick:

bash
1# Resolve conflicts in the files
2# Then continue
3git add .
4git cherry-pick --continue

Wrong commit cherry-picked

bash
1# Abort before completing
2git cherry-pick --abort

Multiple hotfix commits

Cherry-pick in chronological order (oldest first):

bash
1git cherry-pick <older-commit> <newer-commit>