Reset a Branch to Remote State with git

By  on  

Every once in a while I accidentally hose my repository's master branch by merging or committing something I shouldn't.  And then on rare occasion I push that to my remote and then things get all sorts of messed up.  Every PR from that point on has some wonky commits and I look like a noob.  Sometimes the best course of action is to just reset to the a remote branch's master (i.e. the repository I forked the project from) and get on with life that way.  Here's how to do so:

git fetch some-remote   # "origin" if you want to use your own branch
git reset --hard some-remote/master

The first step is fetching a list of branches from the remote.  The next is executing a hard reset of the branch based on the remote.

Now you can stop asking yourself how things got so messed and up can get back to business!

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
    Create a CSS Cube

    CSS cubes really showcase what CSS has become over the years, evolving from simple color and dimension directives to a language capable of creating deep, creative visuals.  Add animation and you've got something really neat.  Unfortunately each CSS cube tutorial I've read is a bit...

Incredible Demos

Discussion

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