4 ms·

On undoing, fixing, or removing commits in git

78 points by gkop 11y ago

Mithaldu 11y ago
I came expecting another proclamation of global perishing of kittens, caused by relentless use of git rebase. Instead i came to find an excellent guide i can link to all my coworkers. This is a really pleasant surprise.
joshschreuder 11y ago
On a similar note is this flowchart which walks you through recovering from various Git mistakes: http://justinhileman.info/article/git-pretty/ http://justinhileman.info/article/git-pretty/
sidm83 11y ago
I discovered this link a few weeks ago while writing an internal 'howto' wiki to help our developers move to git from svn and linked to it right away. Really well written and constructed article.
_ikke_ 11y ago
We use this guide often in the #git irc channel where Seth Robertson used to frequent. It's a nice guide because sometimes people don't even know what they really want because terms like revert are overloaded.
RobertKerans 11y ago
Thank you for this, it's excellent. Even after several years of using git, I still have to look up several of these things every single time I need to fix anything, I don't know why the commands don't stick in my head (just the generally non-intuitive syntax maybe?), this is exceptionally useful.
- vladtaltos 11y ago
  this is the biggest weak point of using git in my opinion. if you are not in the habit of using these undo/remove/fix operations in a regular basis, these commands slip away from you... however, you can also look into this as a safety feature :) removing stuff is dangerous work in version control and thus, maybe, it's good that every time you have to do a dangerous thing, you need to refresh your memory by checking things. doctors and pilots started using check-lists that they go through before operations so that they don't do any mistakes and it seems to be decreasing the number of 'unforced-errors' so to speak... maybe this non-intuitive syntax also helps git in preventing committing simple errors...
  - ntnn 11y ago
    If git's biggest weak point is not having to fix (most likely human) errors then we're pretty good off I'd say.

78 points by gkop 11y ago

I came expecting another proclamation of global perishing of kittens, caused by relentless use of git rebase. Instead i came to find an excellent guide i can link to all my coworkers. This is a really pleasant surprise.

joshschreuder 11y ago

On a similar note is this flowchart which walks you through recovering from various Git mistakes: http://justinhileman.info/article/git-pretty/ http://justinhileman.info/article/git-pretty/

sidm83 11y ago

I discovered this link a few weeks ago while writing an internal 'howto' wiki to help our developers move to git from svn and linked to it right away. Really well written and constructed article.

_ikke_ 11y ago

We use this guide often in the #git irc channel where Seth Robertson used to frequent. It's a nice guide because sometimes people don't even know what they really want because terms like revert are overloaded.

RobertKerans 11y ago

Thank you for this, it's excellent. Even after several years of using git, I still have to look up several of these things every single time I need to fix anything, I don't know why the commands don't stick in my head (just the generally non-intuitive syntax maybe?), this is exceptionally useful.

vladtaltos 11y ago
this is the biggest weak point of using git in my opinion. if you are not in the habit of using these undo/remove/fix operations in a regular basis, these commands slip away from you... however, you can also look into this as a safety feature :) removing stuff is dangerous work in version control and thus, maybe, it's good that every time you have to do a dangerous thing, you need to refresh your memory by checking things. doctors and pilots started using check-lists that they go through before operations so that they don't do any mistakes and it seems to be decreasing the number of 'unforced-errors' so to speak... maybe this non-intuitive syntax also helps git in preventing committing simple errors...
- ntnn 11y ago
  If git's biggest weak point is not having to fix (most likely human) errors then we're pretty good off I'd say.