Git Undo Last Commit

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I'm a massive fan of git; it's super powerful and easy to use, especially when it comes to branching.  The biggest sin I commit when using git is adding files and then committing them...to master branch instead of a feature branch.  Oops.  Certainly don't want that.

If you've done a git add (files) and then commit them to the wrong branch, backing that out is easy:

git reset --soft HEAD~1

With the command above, the files are still added but not committed, so you can create your feature branch, do another git commit -m (message), and be on your way!

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Discussion

  1. Yuriy Husnay

    The other way to achieve this, is

    git reset --soft HEAD^
    

    as HEAD^ is pointer to HEAD~1

    Personally, I have an alias git undo which is:

    git config --global alias.undo 'reset --soft HEAD^'
    
  2. MaxArt

    Git “easy to use”… Uh, what?
    It’s a very complete and powerful tool, no doubt about it, but I wouldn’t call it “easy”. There’s a plethora of options and unclear docs, that it takes a lot of time just to know they exist, not to mention actually use them and get used to them.
    For example, I knew about this trick, but didn’t know about Yuriy’s suggestion.

    That’s why I end up using a tool like SourceTree instead.

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