Git Undo Last Commit

By  on  

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!

Recent Features

  • By
    Chris Coyier’s Favorite CodePen Demos

    David asked me if I'd be up for a guest post picking out some of my favorite Pens from CodePen. A daunting task! There are so many! I managed to pick a few though that have blown me away over the past few months. If you...

  • By
    Vibration API

    Many of the new APIs provided to us by browser vendors are more targeted toward the mobile user than the desktop user.  One of those simple APIs the Vibration API.  The Vibration API allows developers to direct the device, using JavaScript, to vibrate in...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Simple Image Lazy Load and Fade

    One of the quickest and easiest website performance optimizations is decreasing image loading.  That means a variety of things, including minifying images with tools like ImageOptim and TinyPNG, using data URIs and sprites, and lazy loading images.  It's a bit jarring when you're lazy loading images and they just...

  • By
    MooTools ASCII Art

    I didn't realize that I truly was a nerd until I could admit to myself that ASCII art was better than the pieces Picasso, Monet, or Van Gogh could create.  ASCII art is unmatched in its beauty, simplicity, and ... OK, well, I'm being ridiculous;  ASCII...

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.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!