How to fix The previous cherry-pick is now empty, possibly due to conflict resolution in Git

Before taking action, examine what caused the empty cherry-pick. Check if the changes already exist in your branch:

# View the content of the commit you're trying to cherry-pick
git show <commit-hash>

# Compare with your current branch to see if changes already exist
git log --oneline --all --grep="<part of commit message>"

# Check the diff between branches
git diff HEAD..<commit-hash>

If the diff is empty or minimal, the changes likely already exist in your branch.

If you don't need to preserve the empty commit (the most common choice), skip it and continue with the rest of the cherry-pick sequence:

# Skip this commit and continue with remaining commits
git cherry-pick --skip

This abandons the current empty commit and moves to the next commit in the sequence (if you're cherry-picking multiple commits). This is the recommended approach when the changes are truly redundant.

If you need to preserve the commit for historical tracking (e.g., to maintain a 1:1 correspondence with another branch), create the empty commit:

# Commit the empty cherry-pick
git commit --allow-empty

# This opens your editor - you can modify the commit message
# or keep the default cherry-pick message

This is useful in scenarios where you're mirroring commits between branches and need to maintain matching commit history.

If you started the cherry-pick by mistake or want to reconsider your approach:

# Abort the entire cherry-pick operation
git cherry-pick --abort

This returns your repository to the state before you began the cherry-pick. Any resolved conflicts or staged changes from the cherry-pick will be discarded.

Modern Git versions support the --empty flag to handle empty commits automatically during cherry-pick:

# Drop commits that become empty (skip them automatically)
git cherry-pick --empty=drop <commit-range>

# Keep commits that become empty (creates empty commits)
git cherry-pick --empty=keep <commit-range>

# Stop on empty commits for manual decision (default behavior)
git cherry-pick --empty=stop <commit-range>

Using --empty=drop is particularly useful when cherry-picking a range of commits where some may already exist in your branch.

If you suspect your conflict resolution accidentally removed all changes, reset and try again:

# Reset the current cherry-pick state
git reset

# Continue cherry-pick from where it left off
git cherry-pick --continue

# Or abort and restart with the original commit
git cherry-pick --abort
git cherry-pick <original-commit-hash>

During conflict resolution, be careful to preserve the changes you actually want. Use git diff --staged to review what you're about to commit.

Before cherry-picking, verify the commit isn't already in your history:

# Check if commit is an ancestor of your current branch
git merge-base --is-ancestor <commit-hash> HEAD && echo "Already in history"

# Find commits with similar changes
git log --oneline --all --source -- <file-changed-in-commit>

# View the cherry-pick status
git status

If the commit is already in your history through a different path, cherry-picking it will result in an empty commit.