Undoing changes

Overview

Teaching: 25 min
Exercises: 5 min

Questions

• How can I discard unstaged changes?

• How do I edit the last commit?

• How can I undo a commit?

Objectives

• Be able to discard unstaged changes

• Be able to amend the most recent commit

• Be able to discard all changes since a particular commit

• Be able to undo the changes introduced by a commit

There are a number of things which we can amend and change after they have been commited in Git.

Discarding local changes

Maybe we made our change just to see how something looks, or to quickly try something out. Maybe we asked a colleague for help but they ended up making things worse! Whatever the reason, if we’re not unhappy with our changes, and we haven’t yet done a git add we can just throw the changes away and return our file to the most recent version we committed to the repository by using:

$ nano paper.md			# Make some small edits to the file
$ git restore paper.md		# Discard edits we just made

and we can see that our file has reverted to being the most up-to-date one in the repository:

$ git status		# See that we have a clean working directory
$ nano paper.md		# Inspect file to verify changes have been discarded

Amending the most recent commit

If you just made a commit and realised that either you did it a bit too early and the files are not yet ready to be commited. Or, which is not as uncommon as you think, your commit message is not as it is supposed to be. You can fix that using the command git commit --amend

This opens up the default editor for Git which includes the previous commit message - you can edit it and close the editor. This will simply fix the commit message.

But what if we forgot to include some files in the commit?

Let’s try it on our example. First, let’s modify two files: our paper file and the references file. We will add a methodology section to the paper where we detail the model used for the simulations, and add a reference for this to the references file.

$ nano paper.md		# Add methodology section, including a reference to model
$ nano refs.txt		# Add new reference for the model used
$ git status		# Get a status update on file modifications

$ On branch master
Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git restore <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

	modified:   refs.txt
	modified:   paper.md

no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

Let’s then add and commit paper.md but not the references file.

$ git add paper.md		 # Add paper to staging area
$ git commit -m "Describe methodology"

Let’s have a look at our working directory now:

$ git status

$ On branch master
Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git restore <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

	modified:   refs.txt

no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

Also, run git log -2 to see what is the latest commit message and ID.

Now, we want to fix our commit and add the references file.

$ git add refs.txt	# Add reference file
$ git commit --amend	# Amend most recent commit

This will again bring up the editor and we can amend the commit message if required.

Now when we run git status and then git log we can see that our Working Directory is clean and that both files were added.

$ git status
$ git log -3

git revert (undo changes associated with a commit)

git revert removes the changes applied in a specified commit. However, rather than deleting the commit from history, git works out how to undo those changes introduced by the commit, and appends a new commit with the resulting content.

Let’s try it on our example.

Revert a commit

Modify the paper, describing the SMPS which is another instrument used to measure particle sizes, and then make a commit.

$ nano paper.md		# Describe other instrument
$ git add paper.md
$ git commit -m "Describe SMPS"

We now realise that what we’ve just done in our journal article is incorrect because we are not using the data from that instrument. Some of the data got corrupted, and due to problems with the logging computer we are not going to use that data. So it makes sense to abandon the commit completely.

Find the commit ID of the commit you just made, and use it in the command below to revert the commit:

git revert <commit ID>

What does your history look like now?

Solution

After resetting the commit with

$ git revert HEAD		# Undo changes introduced by most recent commit

There will be one new commit on the master branch which undoes the changes.

When we revert, a new commit is created. The HEAD pointer and the branch pointer are in fact moved forward rather than backwards.

We can revert any previous commit. That is, we can “abandon” any of the previous changes. However, depending on the changes we have made since, we may bump into a conflict (which we will cover in more detail later on). For example:

error: could not revert 848361e... Describe SMPS
hint: after resolving the conflicts, mark the corrected paths
hint: with 'git add <paths>' or 'git rm <paths>'
hint: and commit the result with 'git commit'

Behind the scenes Git gets confused trying to merge the commit HEAD is pointing to with the past commit we’re reverting.

So we have seen that git revert is a non-destructive way to undo a commit. What if we don’t want to keep a record of undoing commits? That would give a neater history. git reset can also be used to undo commits, but it does so by deleting history.

git reset --hard (restore a previous state by deleting history)

git reset has several uses, and is most often used to unstage files from the staging area i.e. git reset or git reset <file>.

We are going to use a variant git reset --hard <commit> to reset things to how they were at <commit>. This is a permanent undo which deletes all changes more recent than <commit> from your history. There is clearly potential here to lose work, so use this command with care.

Let’s try that on our paper, building on the example in the previous exercise. Now we have two commits which we want to abandon: the commit outlining the unreliable instrumentation, and the subsequent revert commit. We can achieve this by resetting to the last commit we want to keep.

We can do that by running:

$ git reset --hard HEAD~2	# Move tip of branch to two commits before HEAD

HEAD is now at fbdc44b Add methodology section and update references file

This moves the tip of the branch back to the specified commit. If we look in-depth, this command moves back two pointers: HEAD and the pointer to the tip of the branch we currently are working on (master). (HEAD~ = the commit right before HEAD; HEAD~2 = two commits before HEAD)

The final effect is what we need: we abandoned the commits and we are now back to where we were before making the commit about the data we are not using.

Click for an animation of the revert and reset operations we just used.

This article discusses more in depth git reset showing the differences between the three options:

• --soft
• --mixed
• --hard

Top tip: do not use git reset with remote branches

There is one important thing to remember about the reset command - it should only be used with branches that have not been shared yet (that is they haven’t been pushed into a remote repository that others are using). Resetting is changing the history without leaving trace. This is always a bad practice when using remote repositories and can lead to a horrible mess.

Reverting records the fact of “abandoning the commit” in the history. When we revert in a branch that is shared with others and then push that branch into the remote repository, it is as if we “came clean” about what we were doing. Everyone who pulls the branch in which we reverted changes will see it. With git reset we “keep it secret” that we have undone some changes.

As such, if we want to abandon changes in branches that are shared with others, we should to use the revert command.

See this Atlassian online tutorial for further reading about the differences between git revert and git reset.

How to undo almost anything with Git

See this blog post for more example scenarios and how to recover from them.

Mental freedom

A nice side effect of being able to easily undo changes is the mental freedom/headspace it affords you. There is no penalty for trying something out, making a mess, and then discarding it. It’s quite liberating to be able to just get on with things without nagging doubts about how you’re going to undo it if it doesn’t work out.

Key Points

• git restore <file> discards unstaged changes

• git commit --amend allows you to edit the last commit

• git revert undoes a commit, preserving history

• git reset --hard undoes a commit by deleting history