Course lesson

Remove Changes from a Commit Before Pushing

If we've already committed changes that we don't want to push, we can also remove those with git reset, but we're going to reset back to a specific commit, either with:

Duration: 3 min
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Transcript: Retained from source evidence

If we've already committed changes that we don't want to push, we can also remove those with git reset, but we're going to reset back to a specific commit, either with:

git reset HEAD~1

git reset [HASH]

and that will effectively "undo" the commits before that hash.

Then we can add and commit only the changes that we want.

Inside of the app.js created earlier, we can create a function helloWorld that contains alert("hello!"). Later, you might close that file and open the index.html and make changes to that file like adding a description.

app.js

// our app js code

function helloWorld() {
  alert("hello!")
}

index.html

<html>
  <head>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="/app.js"></script>
  </head>
  <body>

    <h1>Fixing git mistakes</h1>
    <p>Here's how to fix some common git mistakes</p>
  </body>
</html>

You may be tempted to use git add -A alongside a simple commit message after that, but it will be clear that you are ahead by 2 commits. If you're able to see this before committing, you want to see what you're about to push. To check, run git diff origin/master HEAD to see the changes to all files edited.

If you realize you want to get rid of something before you push, check the log with git log --oneline to see which commit you'd like to undo. You have to decide where you want to reset to, so after finding the desired commit use git reset {LOCATION}. The location can be a hash associated with a commit or something like HEAD~1 which takes you to HEAD, then back down the tree 1 time.

After performing a git reset, your files should return to the unstaged location. It's important to be careful to not use git reset after pushing a commit because it'll change the history other people may have already downloaded. So, only use reset on branches that aren't pushed yet.

Now, you can git add index.html and git commit -m "Adds desc for index" to fix what went wrong earlier. Using git status will us we have the app.js not staged for commit and that we are two commits ahead of origin/master. You can use git log --oneline to verify the old commit was replaced with the new one.

✏️ Edit on GitHub