Git: what is a dangling commit/blob and where do they come from?

git git-commit git-fsck git-dangling
doub1ejack picture doub1ejack · Aug 29, 2013 · Viewed 68k times · Source

I'm looking for the basic info on dangling commits & blobs.

My repo seems fine. But I ran git fsck for the first time to see what it did and I have a long list of 'dangling blobs' and a single 'dangling commit'.

What are these things? Where did they come from? Do they indicate anything unusual (good or bad) about the state of my repo?

Answer

Elijah Lynn picture Elijah Lynn · Mar 6, 2014

Dangling blob = A change that made it to the staging area/index but never got committed. One thing that is amazing with git is that once it gets added to the staging area, you can always get it back because these blobs behave like commits in that they have a hash too!!

Dangling commit = A commit that isn't directly linked to by any child commit, branch, tag or other reference. You can get these back too!

Related questions

How do I undo the most recent local commits in Git?

I accidentally committed the wrong files to Git, but didn't push the commit to the server yet. How can I undo those commits from the local repository?

Read More
How do I undo 'git add' before commit?

I mistakenly added files to Git using the command: git add myfile.txt I have not yet run git commit. Is there a way to undo this, so these files won't be included in the commit?

Read More
How to modify existing, unpushed commit messages?

I wrote the wrong thing in a commit message. How can I change the message? The commit has not been pushed yet.

Read More