git revert makes a new commit
git revert simply creates a new commit that is the opposite of an existing commit.
It leaves the files in the same state as if the commit that has been reverted never existed. For example, consider the following simple example:
$ cd /tmp/example
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/example/.git/
$ echo "Initial text" > README.md
$ git add README.md
$ git commit -m "initial commit"
[master (root-commit) 3f7522e] initial commit
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
create mode 100644 README.md
$ echo "bad update" > README.md
$ git commit -am "bad update"
[master a1b9870] bad update
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
In this example the commit history has two commits and the last one is a mistake. Using git revert:
$ git revert HEAD
[master 1db4eeb] Revert "bad update"
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
There will be 3 commits in the log:
$ git log --oneline
1db4eeb Revert "bad update"
a1b9870 bad update
3f7522e initial commit
So there is a consistent history of what has happened, yet the files are as if the bad update never occurred:
$ cat README.md
Initial text
It doesn't matter where in the history the commit to be reverted is (in the above example, the last commit is reverted - any commit can be reverted).
Closing questions
do you have to do something else after?
A git revert is just another commit, so e.g. push to the remote so that other users can pull/fetch/merge the changes and you're done.
Do you have to commit the changes revert made or does revert directly commit to the repo?
git revert is a commit - there are no extra steps assuming reverting a single commit is what you wanted to do.
Obviously, you'll need to push again and probably announce your balls-up to the team.
Indeed - if the remote is in an unstable state - communicating to the rest of the team that they need to pull to get the fix (the reverting commit) would be the right thing to do :).
Answer from AD7six on Stack Overflowgit revert makes a new commit
git revert simply creates a new commit that is the opposite of an existing commit.
It leaves the files in the same state as if the commit that has been reverted never existed. For example, consider the following simple example:
$ cd /tmp/example
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/example/.git/
$ echo "Initial text" > README.md
$ git add README.md
$ git commit -m "initial commit"
[master (root-commit) 3f7522e] initial commit
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
create mode 100644 README.md
$ echo "bad update" > README.md
$ git commit -am "bad update"
[master a1b9870] bad update
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
In this example the commit history has two commits and the last one is a mistake. Using git revert:
$ git revert HEAD
[master 1db4eeb] Revert "bad update"
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
There will be 3 commits in the log:
$ git log --oneline
1db4eeb Revert "bad update"
a1b9870 bad update
3f7522e initial commit
So there is a consistent history of what has happened, yet the files are as if the bad update never occurred:
$ cat README.md
Initial text
It doesn't matter where in the history the commit to be reverted is (in the above example, the last commit is reverted - any commit can be reverted).
Closing questions
do you have to do something else after?
A git revert is just another commit, so e.g. push to the remote so that other users can pull/fetch/merge the changes and you're done.
Do you have to commit the changes revert made or does revert directly commit to the repo?
git revert is a commit - there are no extra steps assuming reverting a single commit is what you wanted to do.
Obviously, you'll need to push again and probably announce your balls-up to the team.
Indeed - if the remote is in an unstable state - communicating to the rest of the team that they need to pull to get the fix (the reverting commit) would be the right thing to do :).
Use Git revert like so:
git revert <insert bad commit hash here>
git revert creates a new commit with the changes that are rolled back. git reset erases your Git history instead of making a new commit.
The steps after are the same as any other commit.
Git commit only saves it to the stage, which is locally on your computer. Use Push to update it to a remote server (Like github).
Use git revert <ID> to revert back to a previous commit. each commit has an identifying code.
See here for more details on revert
The above answer is not quite correct - git revert <ID> does not set your repository to that commit -- git revert <ID> creates a new commit that undoes the changes introduced by commit <ID>. It's more or less a way to 'undo' a commit and save that undo in your history as a new commit.
If you want to set your branch to the state of a particular commit (as implied by the OP), you can use git reset <commit>, or git reset --hard <commit> The first option only updates the INDEX, leaving files in your working directory unchanged as if you had made the edits but not yet committed them. With the --hard option, it replaces the contents of your working directory with what was on <commit>.
A note of warning that git reset will alter history -- if I made several commits and then reset to the first commit, the subsequent commits will no longer be in the commit history. This can cause some serious headaches if any of those lost commits have been pushed to a public repository. Make sure you only use it to get rid of commits that haven't been pushed to another repository!
Also, if I just revert my most recent commit, make changes, then decide I want to go back to before I did the revert, can I do that? I've been manually making a new branch every time I want to work on a previous version of my code because I've been afraid to lose my current work by doing a revert.
If it makes a difference, I'm working in Visual Studio, with their built-in support for GitHub, not the command line. When I want to go back to a previous version of my code, I go to branch history, right click, and click "new branch". I know that can't be the best way to do it, but I've had a hard time finding a good explanation of how reverts actually work in Git/GitHub and I don't want to accidentally lose my current work.