git cherry-pick not working

Git is resolving the cherry-pick as a no-op -- all of the changes introduced by that commit have been introduced by some commit on your current branch. (Or that's what Git thinks, anyway.) Verify that the commit you are cherry-picking hasn't already been merged somehow, as either a proper merge, rebase/cherry-pick, or piecemeal patch. (Use git show <commit-id> to see the diff.)

In my case this was driving me nuts, as it was quite obvious that the specific commit I wanted to cherry pick had not been merged into my current branch.

It turns out someone had already cherry picked the commit a week prior. The changes, but not the specific SHA, were already in my current branch, and I had not noticed them.

Check the file(s) that you're attempting to cherry pick. If they already have the changes, a version of the commit has already been cherry picked or added in another manner. There is thus no need to cherry pick it again.

Also note that adding an empty file (e.g. .gitkeep) to the tree is considered by cherry-pick as an empty commit.