Send a pull request on GitHub for only latest commit

Create a new branch starting from the latest commit, which is also in the origin repository:

git branch new-branch origin/master
git checkout new-branch

Then use git cherry-pick to get the single commit you want the pull request for. If the branch with this commit is called feature and the commit you want is the latest commit in this branch, this will be

git cherry-pick feature

Assuming this patch applies without conflict, you got now a branch for which you can do your pull request.

In a second step, you now need to decide what to do with your feature branch. If you haven't published your changes on this branch yet, the best procedure is probably rebasing this branch upon new-branch (and removing the last commit, if this is not done automatically by git rebase).


I ended up in a situation where I had forked a fork and wanted to submit a pull request back to the original project.

I had:

  • orignal_project
  • forked_project (created from original project at SHA: 9685770)
  • my_fork (created from forked project at SHA: 207e29b)
  • a commit in my fork (SHA: b67627b) that I wanted to submit back to original project

To do this, I:

  1. created a new branch from the SHA where the original project was forked
  2. pulled all from the original project
  3. cherry picked the commit I wanted to submit as a pull request
  4. pushed it all up to github

The git commands were something like:

  1. git branch my-feature-request 9685770
  2. git checkout my-feature-request
  3. git pull https://github.com/original_project/original_project.git
  4. git cherry-pick b67627b
  5. git push origin my-feature-request

Then I picked my-feature-request as the branch for my pull request to the original project.


You need to basically create a new branch & cherry-pick the commits you want to add to it.

Note: you might need these before the checkout/cherry-pick commands

git remote add upstream <git repository>

git remote update

git checkout -b <new-branch-name> upstream/master

git cherry-pick <SHA hash of commit>

git push origin <new-branch-name>

Afterwards, you will see <new-branch-name> branch on github, switch to it and can submit the pull request with the changes you want.