Undoing commits

A bad commit

A commit broke the site. There are two ways back: add a new commit that undoes it (revert), or move the branch back as if it never happened (reset). Choosing correctly matters when others share your history.

revert vs reset

echo "<h1>BROKEN</h1>" > index.html
git commit -am "Experimental header"
git revert HEAD
git log --oneline
cat index.html

echo "draft" > notes.txt
git add .
git commit -m "WIP notes"
git reset HEAD~1
git status
git reset --hard HEAD
git log --oneline

Already pushed or shared? Use revert.
Only on your machine? reset is fine to tidy up.
git reset --hard deletes uncommitted work for good — check git status first.

A bad commit

revert vs reset

The rest of this lesson