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My Git setup is such that I work in a local "feature" branch and commit changes to this branch as I work. When the code is ready I merge into my local "develop" branch. I then push the changes in my local "develop" branch to the remote "develop" branch.

I made some changes to a file and committed them without realizing I was on my local "develop" branch rather than my "feature" branch. I realized my mistake before I pushed the "develop" branch to the remote "develop" branch, so the changes remain local.

How do I undo this commit to my local "develop" branch? I am using Tortoise Git but I can still use the Git command line if needed.

Note: This is not my first commit to the feature branch or first merge to the develop branch.

webworm
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  • Is this the last commit in "develop", or have you made other commits to "develop" since? – melpomene Mar 01 '19 at 21:46
  • @melpomene - This was the last commit to the local develop branch – webworm Mar 01 '19 at 21:47
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    Possible duplicate of [Delete commits from a branch in Git](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1338728/delete-commits-from-a-branch-in-git) – melpomene Mar 01 '19 at 21:48
  • `git reset --hard HEAD~1` will eradicate the last commit in your branch (and any local changes you may have made). Use with care. `git rebase -i` can be used to delete commits from the middle of your history. Use with care. – melpomene Mar 01 '19 at 21:50

3 Answers3

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There are several ways you could resolve the problem. One way would be to cherry-pick the commit on your feature branch. Then reset your develop branch to the previous commit.

  1. git checkout feature
  2. git cherry-pick <commit hash>
  3. git checkout develop
  4. git reset --hard HEAD~1
Bill
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If you forgot to create a branch for your feature, you should create one:

git branch feature

Then you can reset develop back to where it should be:

git reset --hard HEAD~

If you already have a feature branch where you want to move the commit that you accidentally made on develop, then you can use git cherry-pick:

git checkout feature
git cherry-pick develop

Then you can reset develop as above. Just be sure to check it out first:

git checkout develop
Code-Apprentice
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0

So, let's talk about how to move those commits over to the feature branch and then undo them. For the purposes of this explanation, we will assume that only errant commits have gone onto your develop branch locally.

  1. Get the commit hashes for each of the errant commits on develop. You can do this in your gui, or checkout develop and run git log in a terminal. Copy paste them someplace you can reference them later.

  2. Checkout your feature branch. You will now run a git cherry-pick <commit_hash> for each of the commit hashes you saved in step #1. You want to do this in the order in which they were committed onto the develop branch. This replays each of these commits onto your local feature branch.

  3. Do a hard reset on your develop branch to get it back to the remote version. Assuming that the remote reference is origin/develop, you would do git reset --hard origin/develop

Note there are other means of doing this, using git rebase or using interactive rebases. This is just the easiest way I could think of to convey it for someone who has an unknown amount of git experience.

Note that if you are worried about being able to revert in case things don't go as expected, you can leverage git tag to make rescue tags.

Alexander Nied
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  • If there are several "errant commits", you can use `git rebase` instead of multiple `git cherry-pick`s. – Code-Apprentice Mar 01 '19 at 21:57
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    Yep, certainly-- there are faster, more clever ways, for sure-- cherry-picking is more manual, but I figured it was a "safer" approach in case this was a relative git beginner. – Alexander Nied Mar 01 '19 at 21:58
  • Note that my comment is more for the OP and future visitors than for you as the answerer. I assume that since you answer questions in [tag:git] there is a high likelihood that you are familiar with rebase. – Code-Apprentice Mar 01 '19 at 22:00