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This post will cover how we can revert things we didn’t mean to do when using Git commits. Git isn’t so complex that we need a big process to solve our specific problem, but it’s not just that the problems it causes are so big that they require different techniques depending on the problem we’re having and the outcome we want.

Many aspects of Git are easy to understand, but getting back to where we were before is much easier and appreciated; undoing major changes in a repository is even easier. It's a slightly scary moment when we don't know how to use the commands to execute. But in reality, doing small things like committing or undoing a commit is surprisingly easy.

But in this case how would you undo the unwanted commit and then commit your new changes.

Suppose you make some changes and then commit the changes. To do this, there are four ways to do this:

Undoing a commit in Git - Hard Reset

If you have this, 40 of them are yours HEADand (42) are the status of our file.

   (42)
38-39-40
    ↑
  Head

and you want to undo commit 40 and never want to see it again and remove all changes in your locally modified files.

We will use the following commands:

git reset --hard HEAD ~ 1

Output:

 (42)
38-39
   ↑
 Head

Now 39 is HEAD. Because in the example above, we used --hard, now your files are reset to the state they were in at the time of the commit head, which is the 39th commit.

Undoing a commit in Git - Resetting Git

Let's assume that the last commit 40 wasn't a big deal, just a little off from our goal. Now we want to undo the commit but keep our changes. Start over from here, with 40 as our HEAD:

   (42)
38-39-40
    ↑
  Head

Instead of using --hardthe -p parameter, we will use the following command:

git reset HEAD ~ 1

Output:

   (42)
38-39-40
  ↑
Head

As we can see in both cases, HEADonly the latest commit is defined. When we execute git reset HEAD~1, the Git command HEADmoves the pointer back one commit. But (unless you use --hard) we leave the files as they are. We haven't lost anything.

Undoing a commit in Git - Soft reset Git

Simply put, you can even undo our commit but keep our files and index with the following command:

git reset --soft HEAD ~ 1

This not only leaves our files there; it even leaves our index there. When we execute git status, we'll see that the files in the index are the same as before. In fact, we'll see after this command that we can execute git commit, and it will re-execute the earlier commit we just made.

Undoing a commit in Git - Recovering a hard reset file

Suppose we undo a commit like in the first option example, but later realize we need it back. Now, what to do?

Don't worry, there is a way to get it back. We'll use the command git reflogand look at the list of (unfinished) commits we moved. Find the commit we destroyed, and do:

git checkout -b BranchName CommitYouDestroyed

We have now restored that commit. In Git, commits are not deleted for 90 days from the day they were deleted, so we can easily restore it again to our repository as a backup.