Git - Undo pushed commits

What I do in these cases is:

  • In the server, move the cursor back to the last known good commit:

    git push -f origin <last_known_good_commit>:<branch_name>

  • Locally, do the same:

    git reset --hard <last_known_good_commit>
#         ^^^^^^
#         optional

See a full example on a branch my_new_branch that I created for this purpose:

$ git branch
my_new_branch

This is the recent history after adding some stuff to myfile.py:

$ git log
commit 80143bcaaca77963a47c211a9cbe664d5448d546
Author: me
Date:   Wed Mar 23 12:48:03 2016 +0100

    Adding new stuff in myfile.py

commit b4zad078237fa48746a4feb6517fa409f6bf238e
Author: me
Date:   Tue Mar 18 12:46:59 2016 +0100

    Initial commit

I want to get rid of the last commit, which was already pushed, so I run:

$ git push -f origin b4zad078237fa48746a4feb6517fa409f6bf238e:my_new_branch
Total 0 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
To [email protected]:me/myrepo.git
 + 80143bc...b4zad07 b4zad078237fa48746a4feb6517fa409f6bf238e -> my_new_branch (forced update)

Nice! Now I see the file that was changed on that commit (myfile.py) shows in "not staged for commit":

$ git status
On branch my_new_branch
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/my_new_branch'.

Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

    modified:   myfile.py

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

Since I don't want these changes, I just move the cursor back locally as well:

$ git reset --hard b4zad078237fa48746a4feb6517fa409f6bf238e
HEAD is now at b4zad07 Initial commit

So now HEAD is in the previous commit, both in local and remote:

$ git log
commit b4zad078237fa48746a4feb6517fa409f6bf238e
Author: me
Date:   Tue Mar 18 12:46:59 2016 +0100

    Initial commit

You can revert individual commits with:

git revert <commit_hash>

This will create a new commit which reverts the changes of the commit you specified. Note that it only reverts that specific commit, and not commits that come after that. If you want to revert a range of commits, you can do it like this:

git revert <oldest_commit_hash>..<latest_commit_hash>

It reverts all the commits after <oldest_commit_hash> up to and including <latest_commit_hash>. On some versions of git it also reverts the <oldest_commit_hash>, so double check if that commit gets reverted or not. You can always drop the latest revert commit (which reverts the oldest commit) with g reset --hard HEAD~.

To know the hash of the commit(s) you can use git log.

Look at the git-revert man page for more information about the git revert command. Also, look at this answer for more information about reverting commits.


A solution that keeps no traces of the "undo".

NOTE: don't do this if someone already pulled your change (I would use this only on my personal repo.)

run:

git reset <previous label or sha1>

this will re-checkout all the updates locally (so git status will list all updated files)

then you "do your work" and re-commit your changes (Note: this step is optional)

git commit -am "blabla"

At this moment your local tree differs from the remote

git push -f <remote-name> <branch-name>

will force the remote branch to take this push and remove the previous one (specifying remote-name and branch-name is not mandatory but is recommended to avoid updating all branches with update flag).

!! watch-out some tags may still be pointing removed commit !! how-to-delete-a-remote-tag

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