Uh oh... I mistakenly committed a pretty complex change (including subdirectory and files renames) without really knowing what I am doing (or what Git would be doing).
I now want to undo everything such that:
.git
is) to a certain
branch (last one will do for now).I found references to git reset --soft and git reset --hard but I have already proven to myself that I can do real damage by prematurely using a command without fully understanding it. :)
I found the git reset man page but I am still confused as to:
HEAD
?HEAD
and * master
?--soft
, --hard
or
other (3 more options)?git reset
) to
"finalize" the reversal?UPDATE: After reading the answer below:
git reset --hard
HEAD^
?HEAD
is the latest commit of the checked-out branch.master
is a branch (the main branch, by convention) whereas HEAD
is a location in history for the checked-out branch. HEAD
is relative to the branch you are on.git reset --soft
will leave your changes in the working tree, uncommitted for you to do whatever you like with. git reset --hard
will restore the working tree to the state it was in at the commit you reset to.First, to keep the commit in case you want to inspect it later, make a branch:
git checkout -b my_bad_commit
(or alternatively do git branch my_bad_commit
as mentioned in larsman's comment.)
Then return to master
or whatever branch you were on and reset:
git checkout branch_with_bad_commit
git reset --hard HEAD^
HEAD^ translates to "the parent of HEAD," which you can even stack for HEAD^^ = 2 commits back. For more on this topic, check the git community book chapter on undo in git