Fixing common Git goofs

It happens to everyone: You add a file that’s not ready to be committed. Or you commit a set of changes that shouldn’t have been committed. You make a stupid spelling mistake in a commit message. Not to panic. It’s easy to correct most mistakes you make in Git.

Restoring a changed file to its last committed state

Did you start messing around in a file, only to realize you want to restore it to how it was at its last commit point? Just run git checkout followed by the file name; you’ll lose any changes you made, but you’ll gain a clean copy of the file as of its last commit in Git.

Unstaging a file

Did you run git add too soon? No problem. Run git reset HEAD followed by the file name to unstage it.

Fixing the most recent commit message

Need to fix your most recent commit message? Simply run git commit --amend and the editor you’ve configured Git to use will open, and you can edit the message as needed.

Resetting the most recent commit

Did you discover that the contents of a commit weren’t as perfect as they could have been? You have two options:

1. Reset the commit history, but save the changes in your working directory. This allows you to fix the file without losing your changes: git reset HEAD~1. Edit your files as needed, then add and commit as usual.

2. Reset the commit history and lose the changes to the problem file(s) in the commit. Use with caution: git reset --hard HEAD~1.