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Undo work (Checkout, Revert and Reset)

Use cases

Command Scope Common use cases
git checkout <file> Undo changes to a file
git reset HEAD <file> Undo a git add <file>
git revert HEAD~ Revert last commit
git checkout Commit-level Switch between branches or inspect old snapshots
git checkout File-level Discard changes in the working directory
git revert Commit-level Undo commits in a public branch
git revert File-level (N/A)
git reset * Commit-level Discard commits in a private branch or throw away uncommited changes
  • use git revert over git reset; it is better practice
  • git revert HEAD~1 goes back two commits

Log of Commits

View log of Git

git log

# view formatted log
git log --pretty=format:"%h : %an : %ar : %s" -3

View last 2 commits

git log -2

my example

reshama$ git log -2
commit a3334f177bed83528f5ab3883d87f1336f599f49
Author: reshama <rs2715@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue May 24 11:04:52 2016 -0400

    adding test file 4

commit 12dc41f2620118977c17ad21dfc4b504191e170e
Author: reshama <rs2715@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue May 24 11:04:06 2016 -0400

    adding test3 file
reshama$

Discard uncommitted changes to a file

Situation: you've changed a file, but not yet committed the changes

git checkout README.md

How to undo an add (undo a staged file)

git reset HEAD <file>

Revert Commit (* recommended way)

Reverting undoes a commit by creating a new commit. This is a safe way to undo changes, as it has no chance of re-writing the commit history. For example, the following command will figure out the changes contained in the 2nd to last commit, create a new commit undoing those changes, and tack the new commit onto the existing project.

git checkout branch_name
git log -4
git revert HEAD~2

How to Undo a Commit

On the commit-level, resetting is a way to move the tip of a branch to a different commit. This can be used to remove commits from the current branch. For example, the following command moves the hotfix branch backwards by two commits.

git reset --soft HEAD^     # use --soft if you want to keep your changes
git reset --hard HEAD^     # use --hard if you don't care about keeping the changes you made
git reset --soft HEAD~1    # use --soft to preserve changes that were made and undo last commit (~1 = back 1 commit)

Syntax for Windows Users

Note: use ~ instead of ^

References

Reset, Checkout and Revert
Stack Overflow: How do you undo the last commit
Stack Overflow: Remove files from last commit