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

git version-control git-commit undo
Hamza Yerlikaya picture Hamza Yerlikaya · May 29, 2009 · Viewed 9.1M times · Source

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?

Answer

Esko Luontola picture Esko Luontola · May 29, 2009

Undo a commit & redo

$ git commit -m "Something terribly misguided" # (0: Your Accident)
$ git reset HEAD~                              # (1)
<< edit files as necessary >>                  # (2)
$ git add .                                    # (3)
$ git commit -c ORIG_HEAD                      # (4)

  1. This command is responsible for the undo. It will undo your last commit while leaving your working tree (the state of your files on disk) untouched. You'll need to add them again before you can commit them again).

  2. Make corrections to working tree files.

  3. git add anything that you want to include in your new commit.

  4. Commit the changes, reusing the old commit message. reset copied the old head to .git/ORIG_HEAD; commit with -c ORIG_HEAD will open an editor, which initially contains the log message from the old commit and allows you to edit it. If you do not need to edit the message, you could use the -C option.

Alternatively, to edit the previous commit (or just its commit message), commit --amend will add changes within the current index to the previous commit.

To remove (not revert) a commit that has been pushed to the server, rewriting history with git push origin master --force is necessary.

Further Reading

How can I move HEAD back to a previous location? (Detached head) & Undo commits

The above answer will show you git reflog, which you can use to determine the SHA-1 for the commit to which you wish to revert. Once you have this value, use the sequence of commands as explained above.

HEAD~ is the same as HEAD~1. The article What is the HEAD in git? is helpful if you want to uncommit multiple commits.

Related questions

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
Why does 'git commit' not save my changes?

I did a git commit -m "message" like this: > git commit -m "save arezzo files" # On branch master # Changes not staged for commit: # (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed) # (use "git checkout -- &…

Read More
How do I make a Git commit in the past?

I'm converting everything over to Git for my own personal use and I found some old versions of a file already in the repository. How do I commit it to the history in the correct order according the file's "date …

Read More