Recovery

Git has no undo button. What it has instead is a set of commands that move things back, and a rule for choosing between them: the further back you go, the more work you throw away.

Undo a commit you have not pushed. git reset moves the branch pointer. --soft keeps your changes staged, --mixed unstages them but leaves the files alone, and --hard discards the changes too. Reach for --soft or --mixed almost every time.

Undo a commit you have pushed. git revert records a new commit that undoes the old one. This is the one to use once other people have your history, because it does not rewrite anything they have already fetched.

Recover something that was never committed. git reflog records every position HEAD has held, including commits that are no longer on any branch.

git reflog
git switch -c recovered abc1234

That last pair is the closest thing Git has to a safety net. A commit that was amended away, reset off a branch by mistake, or rebased into oblivion is usually still in the reflog, and you can branch from it.

Get out of a bad rebase. git rebase --abort returns you to where you were before it started. git merge --abort does the same for a merge. Both are safe to run at any point during the operation.

Start with Undoing Changes for the decision, then Git Reflog for the rescue.

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