Use and Compare the Different git Reset Options: --hard, --soft, and --mixed

git reset has three primary options that we might use: --soft, --hard and --mixed (the default).

We'll use git reset to undo the latest commit in all three ways, and compare the result of reseting with each flag.

If our app.js is modified and we run the commands

git add app.js
git commit -m "app js changes"
git log --oneline

it will commit the file locally and we can see the commit in your tree.

Running git --help reset will show the different reset options.

The common flags you will see are --soft, --hard, and --mixed. If you try git reset --soft HEAD~1 to reset back one from the HEAD, it will take the previously committed app.js and move it back to the staging area.

We can redo this with git commit -m "take 2" and try a reset with git reset --mixed HEAD~1, the app.js removes the commit as well as unstages the changes.

Trying another reset, we can run git add app.js and git commit -m "take 3" to prepare our file. We can enter git reset --hard HEAD~1, but see that it actually causes us to lose our work. It gets rid of the commit, unstages the changes, and removes them from our directory. Because we lose our work doing so, you don't usually want to do a git reset --hard.

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