How to With Git: Rollback Commit

If you’ve been making changes to your Git repo and made a mistake, it’s always nice to know you have a way to rollback your commits to get your workflow back on track. In this guide, we’ll look at the git revert command for local and remote commits to a repository.

It’s important to understand the difference between git reset and git revert before diving in.

Advantages of git revert Over git reset

Reverting has two important advantages over resetting:

• Reverting does not change the project history, which makes it a safer operation for commits that have already been pushed to a shared repository.
• Reverting is able to target an individual commit at an arbitrary point in the history, while if you use git reset, it can only work backward from the current commit.

Using the git revert Command to Rollback a Commit

The command syntax for git revert is:

git revert 

Where the <commit> is described in any of the supported commit ID forms Git understands.

You can use git reflog to see the local Git history with its shorthand commit IDs, or use git log to find the longer-form SHA-1 commit IDs for the whole committed Git history.

$ git reflog  bc32b0d HEAD@{0}: commit: Added contact-us.htm  ead83d9 HEAD@{1}: commit: Added blog.htm      $ git log  commit bc32b0d8a583ccc3b0bcc9fbdfe3c7bbd1b4f0d1  Author: User <user@example.com>  Date:   Tue Feb 10 12:38:32 2015 -0500        Added contact-us.htm    commit ead83d9f1d800de241580070d22a17f769ea7866  Author: User <user@example.com>  Date:   Tue Feb 10 12:38:00 2015 -0500        Added blog.htm

The git reflog command records a chronological history of everything you have done in your local repository. Its full output might look like this:

bc32b0d HEAD@{1}: commit: Added contact-us.htm  ead83d9 HEAD@{2}: commit: Added blog.htm  1a890e7 HEAD@{3}: commit: Added about-us.htm  bf58ea1 HEAD@{4}: commit: Added index.htm  5c66257 HEAD@{5}: commit (initial): Added README.md

Case 1: Reverting a Single, Local Git Commit

Now let’s say since you just added a contact-us.htm file to your project, you’ve realized you don’t really need the about-us.htm file anymore.

You can revert to the time when you made that commit and keep all changes after that by doing the following:

git revert 1a890e7

Git will prompt you with a new note for this revert commit, giving you a default of:

Revert "Added about-us.htm"    This reverts commit 1a890e7980283e348cde0444cabe709f6342a851.

Go ahead and save that note, or create your own to complete the revert:

[master 2bbaed3] Revert "Added about-us.htm"   1 file changed, 1 deletion(-)   delete mode 100644 about-us.htm

This will revert a specific, local commit. Newer commits and the Git history are preserved.

$ git reflog  2bbaed3 HEAD@{0}: revert: Revert "Added about-us.htm"  bc32b0d HEAD@{1}: commit: Added contact-us.htm  ead83d9 HEAD@{2}: commit: Added blog.htm  1a890e7 HEAD@{3}: commit: Added about-us.htm  bf58ea1 HEAD@{4}: commit: Added index.htm  5c66257 HEAD@{5}: commit (initial): Added README.md    $ ls  blog.htm  contact-us.htm  index.htm  README.md

Case 2: Reverting a Range of Local Git Commits

To revert all the local actions from “1a890e7” up to “HEAD,” use the following:

git revert 1a890e7..HEAD

Case 3: Reverting a Git Commit That Was Pushed

After you check out the remote repository, you can first use git revert and then push as usual:

git revert 1a890e7980283e348cde0444cabe709f6342a851  git push origin 

Case 4: Reverting a Range of Git Commits That Were Pushed

We can also undo a set of pushed commits:

git revert 1a890e7980283e348cde0444cabe709f6342a851..ead83d9f1d800de241580070d22a17f769ea7866  git push origin 

Just Need to Undo A Quick Local Commit? Use git reset

Sometimes if you just make a quick, local mistake you might not want to use git revert, and instead you might just want to use git reset.

Either way, you should hopefully now understand how to fix a bad commit that you accidentally made with Git. The process might seem complicated and scary at first, but it’s actually pretty simple to understand once you’ve gone through the process a few times yourself.