Undo changes#

$ git reset [--hard|--soft] TARGET_REFERENCE

resets the history to a previous commit, for example:

$ git reset HEAD~1
HEAD~1

takes back the last commit and its changes are now transferred back to the staging area.

If there are changes in the staging area, they are moved to the working area, for example:

$ echo 'My first repo' > README.rst
$ git add README.rst
$ git status
On branch main
Changes marked for commit:
  (use "git rm --cached <Datei>..." to remove from staging area)
    New file:     README.rst
$ git reset
$ git status
On branch main
Unversioned files:
  (use "git add <file>...", to mark the changes for commit)
    README.rst
--hard

discards the changes in the staging and working area as well.

$ git status
On branch main
Changes marked for commit:
  (use "git rm --cached <Datei>..." to remove from staging area)
    New file:     README.rst
$ git reset --hard
$ git status
On branch main
nothing to commit (create/copy files and use "git add" to version)
--soft

takes back the commits, but leaves the stage and workspace unchanged.

Warning

The risk with reset is that work can be lost. Commits are not deleted immediately, but they can become orphaned so that there is no direct path to them. They must then be found and restored promptly with git reflog, as Git usually deletes all orphaned commits after 30 days.

$ git revert COMMIT SHA

creates a new commit and reverts the changes of the specified commit so that the changes are inverted.

$ git fetch --prune REMOTE

Remote refs are removed when they are removed from the remote repository.

$ git commit --amend

updates and replaces the last commit with a new commit that combines all deployed changes with the contents of the previous commit. If nothing is provided, only the previous commit message is rewritten.

$ git restore FILE

changes files in the working directory to a state previously known to Git. By default, Git HEAD checks out the last commit of the current branch.

Note

In Git < 2.23, git restore is not yet available. In this case you still have to use git checkout:

$ git checkout FILE

Undo commit in the wrong branch#

If you have accidentally committed to an existing branch instead of creating a new branch first, you can change this in the following three steps:

  1. create a new branch with $ git branch NEW_BRANCH

  2. Resets the last commit in your active branch with $ git reset HEAD~ --hard

  3. Apply the changes to the new branch with $ git switch NEW_BRANCH

Remove a file from the history#

A file can be completely removed from the current branches Git history. This could be necessary if you accidentally committed passwords or huge files:

$ git filter-repo --invert-paths --path path/somefile
$ git push --no-verify --mirror

Note

Inform the team members that they should create a clone of the repository again.

Remove a string from the history#

$ git filter-repo --message-callback 'return re.sub(b"^git-svn-id:.*\n", b"", message, flags=re.MULTILINE)'

See also