Practical uses of git reset --soft

Question

I have been working with git for just over a month  Indeed I have used reset for the first time only yesterday  but the soft reset still doesn t make much sense to me   I understand I can use the soft reset to edit a commit without altering the index or the working directory  as I would with git commit --amend    Are these two commands really the same  reset --soft vs commit --amend   Any reason to use one or the other in practical terms  And more importantly  are there any other uses for reset --soft apart from amending a commit

User · Answer

I use it to amend more than just the last commit   Let s say I made a mistake in commit A and then made commit B  Now I can only amend B  So I do git reset --soft HEAD    I correct and re-commit A and then re-commit B   Of course  it s not very convenient for large commits    but you shouldn t do large commits anyway  -

User · Answer

Another use case is when you want to replace the other branch with yours in a pull request  for example  lets say that you have a software with features A  B  C in develop   You are developing with the next version and you    Removed feature B Added feature D   In the process  develop just added hotfixes for feature B   You can merge develop into next  but that can be messy sometimes  but you can also use git reset --soft origin develop and create a commit with your changes and the branch is mergeable without conflicts and keep your changes   It turns out that git reset --soft is a handy command  I personally use it a lot to squash commits that dont have  completed work  like  WIP  so when I open the pull request  all my commits are understandable

User · Answer

One practical use is if you have committed to your local repo already  ie  git commit -m   then you can reverse that last commit by doing git reset --soft HEAD 1  Also for your knowledge  if you have staged your changes already  ie with  git add    then you can reverse the staging by doing git reset --mixed HEAD or i ve commonly also just used git reset  lastly  git reset --hard wipes everything out including your local changes  The   after head tells you how many commits to go to from the top

User · Answer

A great reason to use  git reset --soft  lt sha1 gt   is to move HEAD in a bare repo    If you try to use the --mixed or --hard option  you ll get an error since you re trying to modify and working tree and or index that does not exist   Note  You will need to do this directly from the bare repo   Note Again  You will need to make sure the branch you want to reset in the bare repo is the active branch  If not  follow VonC s answer on how to update the active branch in a bare repo when you have direct access to the repo

User · Answer

While I really like the answers in this thread  I use git reset --soft for a slightly different  but a very practical scenario nevertheless   I use an IDE for development which has a good diff tool for showing changes  staged and unstaged  after my last commit  Now  most of my tasks involve multiple commits  For example  let s say I make 5 commits to complete a particular task  I use the diff tool in the IDE during every incremental commit from 1-5 to look at my changes from the last commit  I find it a very helpful way to review my changes before committing   But at the end of my task  when I want to see all my changes together  from before 1st commit   to do a self code-review before making a pull request  I would only see the changes from my previous commit  after commit 4  and not changes from all the commits of my current task   So I use git reset --soft HEAD 4 to go back 4 commits  This lets me see all the changes together  When I am confident of my changes  I can then do git reset HEAD  1  and push it to remote confidently

User · Answer

You can use git reset --soft to change the version you want to have as parent for the changes you have in your index and working tree  The cases where this is useful are rare  Sometimes you might decide that the changes you have in your working tree should belong onto a different branch  Or you can use this as a simple way to collapse several commits into one  similar to squash fold    See this answer by VonC for a practical example  Squash the first two commits in Git

User · Answer

One possible usage would be when you want to continue your work on a different machine  It would work like this    Checkout a new branch with a stash-like name   git checkout -b  lt branchname gt  stash  Push your stash branch up   git push -u origin  lt branchname gt  stash  Switch to your other machine  Pull down both your stash and existing branches   git checkout  lt branchname gt  stash  git checkout  lt branchname gt   You should be on your existing branch now  Merge in the changes from the stash branch   git merge  lt branchname gt  stash  Soft reset your existing branch to 1 before your merge   git reset --soft HEAD   Remove your stash branch   git branch -d  lt branchname gt  stash  Also remove your stash branch from origin   git push origin   lt branchname gt  stash  Continue working with your changes as if you had stashed them normally    I think  in the future  GitHub and co  should offer this  remote stash  functionality in fewer steps

User · Answer

SourceTree is a git GUI which has a pretty convenient interface for staging just the bits you want  It does not have anything remotely similar for amending a proper revision   So git reset --soft HEAD 1 is much more useful than commit --amend in this scenario  I can undo the commit  get all the changes back into the staging area  and resume tweaking the staged bits using SourceTree   Really  it seems to me that commit --amend is the more redundant command of the two  but git is git and does not shy away from similar commands that do slightly different things

User · Answer

Use Case - Combine a series of local commits   Oops  Those three commits could be just one     So  undo the last 3  or whatever  commits  without affecting the index nor working directory   Then commit all the changes as one   E g    gt  git add -A  git commit -m  Start here    gt  git add -A  git commit -m  One   gt  git add -A  git commit -m  Two   gt  git add -A  git commit -m  Three   gt  git log --oneline --graph -4 --decorate   gt    da883dc  HEAD  master  Three  gt    92d3eb7 Two  gt    c6e82d3 One  gt    e1e8042 Start here    gt  git reset --soft HEAD 3  gt  git log --oneline --graph -1 --decorate   gt    e1e8042 Start here    Now all your changes are preserved and ready to be committed as one   Short answers to your questions  Are these two commands really the same  reset --soft vs commit --amend      No     Any reason to use one or the other in practical terms    commit --amend to add rm files from the very last commit or to change its message   reset --soft  lt commit gt  to combine several sequential commits into a new one    And more importantly  are there any other uses for reset --soft apart from amending a commit    See other answers

User · Answer

git reset is all about moving HEAD  and generally the branch ref  Question  what about the working tree and index  When employed with --soft  moves HEAD  most often updating the branch ref  and only the HEAD  This differ from commit --amend as    it doesn t create a new commit  it can actually move HEAD to any commit  as commit --amend is only about not moving HEAD  while allowing to redo the current commit      Just found this example of combining    a classic merge a subtree merge   all into one  octopus  since there is more than two branches merged  commit merge   Tomas  wereHamster  Carnecky explains in his  Subtree Octopus merge  article         The subtree merge strategy can be used if you want to merge one project into a subdirectory of another project  and the subsequently keep the subproject up to date  It is an alternative to git submodules     The octopus merge strategy can be used to merge three or more branches  The normal strategy can merge only two branches and if you try to merge more than that  git automatically falls back to the octopus strategy           The problem is that you can choose only one strategy  But I wanted to combine the two in order to get a clean history in which the whole repository is atomically updated to a new version       I have a superproject  let s call it projectA  and a subproject  projectB  that I merged into a subdirectory of projectA      that s the subtree merge part      I m also maintaining a few local commits    ProjectA is regularly updated  projectB has a new version every couple days or weeks and usually depends on a particular version of projectA         When I decide to update both projects  I don t simply pull from projectA and projectB as that would create two commits for what should be an atomic update of the whole project    Instead  I create a single merge commit which combines projectA  projectB and my local commits    The tricky part here is that this is an octopus merge  three heads   but projectB needs to be merged with the subtree strategy  So this is what I do      Merge projectA with the default strategy  git merge projectA master    Merge projectB with the subtree strategy  git merge -s subtree projectB master   Here the author used a reset --hard  and then read-tree to restore what the first two merges had done to the working tree and index  but that is where reset --soft can help  How to I redo those two merges  which have worked  i e  my working tree and index are fine  but without having to record those two commits     Move the HEAD  and just the HEAD  two commits back  git reset --soft HEAD  2    Now  we can resume Tomas s solution     Pretend that we just did an octopus merge with three heads  echo   git rev-parse projectA master   gt   git MERGE HEAD echo   git rev-parse projectB master   gt  gt   git MERGE HEAD    And finally do the commit  git commit     So  each time    you are satisfied with what you end up with  in term of working tree and index  you are not satisfied with all the commits that took you to get there    git reset --soft is the answer

User · Answer

Another potential use is as an alternative to stashing  which some people don t like  see e g  https   codingkilledthecat wordpress com 2012 04 27 git-stash-pop-considered-harmful     For example  if I m working on a branch and need to fix something urgently on master  I can just do   git commit -am  In progress     then checkout master and do the fix  When I m done  I return to my branch and do  git reset --soft HEAD 1   to continue working where I left off

[git] Practical uses of git reset --soft?

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