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Undo wrong Git changes

Chris Bongers on July 30, 2022

The other day I got a lovely email from one of my readers asking how to revert a commit that was made wrongly. I looked back at my articles and rea...
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Leonardo Montini •

Might be worth mentioning that in case you have a pushed commit, you can still do the same as for local commit if you have force rights on the repo.

git reset --soft HEAD~
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And you get rid of the commit on your local branch, then

git push --force
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And the commit is also gone from the upstream repo as well.

There are a few different ways to get a similar result (get code back to the previous state), it's good to know as many as possible to properly decide which one to use based on the situation :)

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Chris Bongers •

Thanks a lot Leonardo!
Indeed there are a lot of different option to keep track of so thanks for adding these 💖

If you want you can also adjust my original article to include these? *(leaving that up to you)

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JoelBonetR 🥇 •

I'd add it but also explain in bold that this workaround with --force can also create issues with other team members commits if you're working on the same branch 😂

As you'll need to pull changes first
.. Won't be nice to find out a mate's commit disappeared suddenly 😅

I'd rather prefer to aim a single commit by it's hash identifier just to make sure.

Still double-checking before committing and using MR/PR process from an individual branch is king to avoid issues.

Best regards

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Yao Zhixiang • • Edited 
git reset HEAD~
git checkout .
git push --force
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git reset --hard HEAD~
git push --force
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Rakesh S M •

A better approach but it can cause issues if multiple people are working on same branch. i guess it can be tweaked abit more.

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Chris Hansen •

Hey great article! Just to confirm on 'git revert.' After finding the hash, and using the command, it immediately updates the local files? Or does the remote repo become 'ahead' of local version and must we do a 'git pull' to accept updated changes again!? I'd test it but I'm out right now 😂💯

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Chris Bongers •

The revert is still local, you'll need to push it to get up to date on the remote.

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Chris Hansen •

Ahhh ofc, what am I saying lol. Thanks 👌

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Chris Bongers •

It happens, luckily we have some good ways of ondoing it 💖

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Chris Bongers •

Yep, well still make mistakes time to time 😅

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Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard •

My IDE has a command for dropping a commit. Don't know/don't care about how the cli does it.

Git reset soft is my favorite solution for cleaning up the history

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Chris Bongers •

Ah yes!
Big fan of using tools that do it for you.

Less struggle and less prone to mistakes.

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G. Horton •

Great post, saving it for later. :)

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BannySilvey •

Can to undo a git clean? ادعيه لجلب الحبيب

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imzivko • • Edited

Great guide but I have a totally unrelated question.
What's the name of the shell prompt you're using?

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Chris Bongers •

I think that's in iTerm (could also be in WebStorm) not sure which one I used for this article.
Mainly look fancy due to OhMyZSH

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sina •

👏👏👏