Cherry-Pick without affecting working tree / index?

[Tao Klerks <tao@klerks.biz>]

Hi folks,

I'm wondering whether it's possible to perform a (non-conflicting)
cherry pick without impacting the working tree (or index).

I understand Elijah Newren has been working on git-merge-tree changes
that would allow for simulating (and even saving) merge commits
without affecting the index or working tree, and I could imagine
that's a piece of how such a thing could/should work, but I'm not
terribly clear on the relationship between merges and cherry-picks.

It *seems* as though I could enact something functionally equivalent
to a cherry-pick by first creating a (temporary) "--ours" merge commit
on the target branch, pretending to have merged the parent commit of
the cherry-pickable one, and then merging the cherry-pick commit
itself on top of that. The resulting tree could be used as the basis
for a final commit on top of the original tip of the target branch, if
that merge were clean, and otherwise fail saying "there are conflicts,
go do things properly in a working tree pls".

I'm not sure whether this is the right way to conceive of
cherry-picking, however, or whether it makes more sense to conceive of
it as a single-commit rebase. Is there a relationship between
git-merge-tree and rebases? Is there an aspiration to develop "server
side rebase" also at some stage?

Thanks for any help understanding how cherry-picks conceptually "work".

Thanks,
Tao