It's as simple as this:
git reset HEAD^
Note: some shells treat ^ as a special character (for example some Windows shells or ZSH with globbing enabled), so you may have to quote "HEAD^" or use HEAD~1 in those cases.
git reset without a --hard or --soft moves your HEAD to point to the specified commit, without changing any files. HEAD^ refers to the (first) parent commit of your current commit, which in your case is the commit before the temporary one.
Note that another option is to carry on as normal, and then at the next commit point instead run:
git commit --amend [-m … etc]
which will instead edit the most recent commit, having the same effect as above.
Note that this (as with nearly every git answer) can cause problems if you've already pushed the bad commit to a place where someone else may have pulled it from. Try to avoid that
Answer from Gareth on Stack OverflowIt's as simple as this:
git reset HEAD^
Note: some shells treat ^ as a special character (for example some Windows shells or ZSH with globbing enabled), so you may have to quote "HEAD^" or use HEAD~1 in those cases.
git reset without a --hard or --soft moves your HEAD to point to the specified commit, without changing any files. HEAD^ refers to the (first) parent commit of your current commit, which in your case is the commit before the temporary one.
Note that another option is to carry on as normal, and then at the next commit point instead run:
git commit --amend [-m … etc]
which will instead edit the most recent commit, having the same effect as above.
Note that this (as with nearly every git answer) can cause problems if you've already pushed the bad commit to a place where someone else may have pulled it from. Try to avoid that
There are two ways of handling this. Which is easier depends on your situation.
Reset
If the commit you want to get rid of was the last commit, and you have not done any additional work you can simply use git-reset
git reset HEAD^
Takes your branch back to the commit just before your current HEAD. However, it doesn't actually change the files in your working tree. As a result, the changes that were in that commit show up as modified - its like an 'uncommit' command. In fact, I have an alias to do just that.
git config --global alias.uncommit 'reset HEAD^'
Then you can just used git uncommit in the future to back up one commit.
Squashing
Squashing a commit means combining two or more commits into one. I do this quite often. In your case you have a half done feature commited, and then you would finish it off and commit again with the proper, permanent commit message.
git rebase -i <ref>
I say above because I want to make it clear this could be any number of commits back. Run git log and find the commit you want to get rid of, copy its SHA1 and use it in place of <ref>. Git will take you into interactive rebase mode. It will show all the commits between your current state and whatever you put in place of <ref>. So if <ref> is 10 commits ago, it will show you all 10 commits.
In front of each commit, it will have the word pick. Find the commit you want to get rid of and change it from pick to fixup or squash. Using fixup simply discards that commits message and merges the changes into its immediate predecessor in the list. The squash keyword does the same thing, but allows you to edit the commit message of the newly combined commit.
Note that the commits will be re-committed in the order they show up on the list when you exit the editor. So if you made a temporary commit, then did other work on the same branch, and completed the feature in a later commit, then using rebase would allow you to re-sort the commits and squash them.
WARNING:
Rebasing modifies history - DONT do this to any commits you have already shared with other developers.
Stashing
In the future, to avoid this problem consider using git stash to temporarily store uncommitted work.
git stash save 'some message'
This will store your current changes off to the side in your stash list. Above is the most explicit version of the stash command, allowing for a comment to describe what you are stashing. You can also simply run git stash and nothing else, but no message will be stored.
You can browse your stash list with...
git stash list
This will show you all your stashes, what branches they were done on, and the message and at the beginning of each line, and identifier for that stash which looks like this stash@{#} where # is its position in the array of stashes.
To restore a stash (which can be done on any branch, regardless of where the stash was originally created) you simply run...
git stash apply stash@{#}
Again, there # is the position in the array of stashes. If the stash you want to restore is in the 0 position - that is, if it was the most recent stash. Then you can just run the command without specifying the stash position, git will assume you mean the last one: git stash apply.
So, for example, if I find myself working on the wrong branch - I may run the following sequence of commands.
git stash
git checkout <correct_branch>
git stash apply
In your case you moved around branches a bit more, but the same idea still applies.
How do I undo the last commit without losing changes?
version control - How do I undo the most recent local commits in Git? - Stack Overflow
Undoing last commit
New to git, advice needed. Revert commit but keep changes
How to Undo, Revert, or Delete a Git Commit
How do I undo a merge commit?
What happens if I encounter conflicts while reverting a commit?
Videos
Undo a commit & redo
$ git commit -m "Something terribly misguided" # (0: Your Accident)
$ git reset HEAD~ # (1)
# === If you just want to undo the commit, stop here! ===
[ edit files as necessary ] # (2)
$ git add . # (3)
$ git commit -c ORIG_HEAD # (4)
git resetis the command 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.- Make corrections to working tree files.
git addanything that you want to include in your new commit.- Commit the changes, reusing the old commit message.
resetcopied the old head to.git/ORIG_HEAD;commitwith-c ORIG_HEADwill 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-Coption.
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 main --force[-with-lease] is necessary. It's almost always a bad idea to use --force; prefer --force-with-lease instead, and as noted in the git manual:
You should understand the implications of rewriting history if you amend a commit that has already been published.
Further Reading
You can use git reflog 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.
Undoing a commit is a little scary if you don't know how it works. But it's actually amazingly easy if you do understand. I'll show you the 4 different ways you can undo a commit.
Say you have this, where C is your HEAD and (F) is the state of your files.
(F)
A-B-C
↑
master
Option 1: git reset --hard
You want to destroy commit C and also throw away any uncommitted changes. You do this:
git reset --hard HEAD~1
The result is:
(F)
A-B
↑
master
Now B is the HEAD. Because you used --hard, your files are reset to their state at commit B.
Option 2: git reset
Maybe commit C wasn't a disaster, but just a bit off. You want to undo the commit but keep your changes for a bit of editing before you do a better commit. Starting again from here, with C as your HEAD:
(F)
A-B-C
↑
master
Do this, leaving off the --hard:
git reset HEAD~1
In this case the result is:
(F)
A-B-C
↑
master
In both cases, HEAD is just a pointer to the latest commit. When you do a git reset HEAD~1, you tell Git to move the HEAD pointer back one commit. But (unless you use --hard) you leave your files as they were. So now git status shows the changes you had checked into C. You haven't lost a thing!
Option 3: git reset --soft
For the lightest touch, you can even undo your commit but leave your files and your index:
git reset --soft HEAD~1
This not only leaves your files alone, it even leaves your index alone. When you do git status, you'll see that the same files are in the index as before. In fact, right after this command, you could do git commit and you'd be redoing the same commit you just had.
Option 4: you did git reset --hard and need to get that code back
One more thing: Suppose you destroy a commit as in the first example, but then discover you needed it after all? Tough luck, right?
Nope, there's still a way to get it back. Type this
git reflog
and you'll see a list of (partial) commit SHAs (that is, hashes) that you've moved around in. Find the commit you destroyed, and do this:
git checkout -b someNewBranchName shaYouDestroyed
You've now resurrected that commit. Commits don't actually get destroyed in Git for some 90 days, so you can usually go back and rescue one you didn't mean to get rid of.