How to fix committing to the wrong Git branch

Question

I just made a perfectly good commit to the wrong branch  How do I undo the last commit in my master branch and then take those same changes and get them into my upgrade branch

User · Answer

For multiple commits on the wrong branch

If, for you, it is just about 1 commit, then there are plenty of other easier resetting solutions available. For me, I had about 10 commits that I'd accidentally created on master branch instead of, let's call it target, and I did not want to lose the commit history.

What you could do, and what saved me was using this answer as a reference, using a 4 step process, which is -

Create a new temporary branch temp from master
Merge temp into the branch originally intended for commits, i.e. target
Undo commits on master
Delete the temporary branch temp.

Here are the above steps in details -

Create a new branch from the master (where I had accidentally committed a lot of changes)
```
git checkout -b temp
```
Note: -b flag is used to create a new branch
Just to verify if we got this right, I'd do a quick git branch to make sure we are on the temp branch and a git log to check if we got the commits right.
Merge the temporary branch into the branch originally intended for the commits, i.e. target.
First, switch to the original branch i.e. target (You might need to git fetch if you haven't)
```
git checkout target
```
Note: Not using -b flag
Now, let's merge the temporary branch into the branch we have currently checkout out target
```
git merge temp
```
You might have to take care of some conflicts here, if there are. You can push (I would) or move on to the next steps, after successfully merging.
Undo the accidental commits on master using this answer as reference, first switch to the master
```
git checkout master
```
then undo it all the way back to match the remote using the command below (or to particular commit, using appropriate command, if you want)
```
git reset --hard origin/master
```
Again, I'd do a git log before and after just to make sure that the intended changes took effect.
Erasing the evidence, that is deleting the temporary branch. For this, first you need to checkout the branch that the temp was merged into, i.e. target (If you stay on master and execute the command below, you might get a error: The branch 'temp' is not fully merged), so let's
```
git checkout target
```
and then delete the proof of this mishap
```
git branch -d temp
```

There you go.

User · Answer

So if your scenario is that you ve committed to master but meant to commit to another-branch  which may or not may not already exist  but you haven t pushed yet  this is pretty easy to fix      if your branch doesn t exist  then add the -b argument  git checkout -b another-branch git branch --force master origin master   Now all your commits to master will be on another-branch   Sourced with love from  http   haacked com archive 2015 06 29 git-migrate

User · Answer

If the branch you wanted to apply your changes to already exists  branch develop  for example   follow the instructions that were provided by fotanus below  then    git checkout develop git rebase develop my feature   applies changes to correct branch git checkout develop    cuz rebasing will leave you on my feature git merge develop my feature   will be a fast-forward git branch -d my feature   And obviously you could use tempbranch or any other branch name instead of my feature if you wanted    Also  if applicable  delay the stash pop  apply  until after you ve merged at your target branch

User · Answer

If you run into this issue and you have Visual Studio  you can do the following   Right-click on your branch and select View History     Right-click on commit you want to go back to  And Revert or Reset as needed

User · Answer

I recently did the same thing  where I accidentally committed a change to master  when I should have committed to other-branch  But I didn t push anything    If you just committed to the wrong branch  and have not changed anything since  and have not pushed to the repo  then you can do the following      rewind master to point to the commit just before your most recent commit     this takes all changes in your most recent commit  and turns them into unstaged changes   git reset HEAD 1      temporarily save your unstaged changes as a commit that s not attached to any branch using git stash    all temporary commits created with git stash are put into a stack of temporary commits  git stash     create other-branch  if the other branch doesn t already exist  git branch other-branch     checkout the other branch you should have committed to  git checkout other-branch     take the temporary commit you created  and apply all of those changes to the new branch     This also deletes the temporary commit from the stack of temp commits  git stash pop     add the changes you want with git add        re-commit your changes onto other-branch git commit -m  some message       NOTE  in the above example  I was rewinding 1 commit with git reset HEAD 1  But if you wanted to rewind n commits  then you can do git reset HEAD n   Also  if you ended up committing to the wrong branch  and also ended up write some more code before realizing that you committed to the wrong branch  then you could use git stash to save your in-progress work      save the not-ready-to-commit work you re in the middle of git stash      rewind n commits git reset HEAD n      stash the committed changes as a single temp commit onto the stack   git stash      create other-branch  if it doesn t already exist  git branch other-branch     checkout the other branch you should have committed to  git checkout other-branch     apply all the committed changes to the new branch git stash pop     add the changes you want with git add        re-commit your changes onto the new branch as a single commit  git commit -m  some message         pop the changes you were in the middle of and continue coding git stash pop   NOTE  I used this website as a reference https   www clearvision-cm com blog what-to-do-when-you-commit-to-the-wrong-git-branch

User · Answer

To elaborate on this answer  in case you have multiple commits to move from  e g  develop to new branch   git checkout develop   You re probably there already git reflog   Find LAST GOOD  FIRST NEW  LAST NEW hashes git checkout new branch git cherry-pick FIRST NEW   LAST NEW       includes FIRST NEW git reflog   Confirm that your commits are safely home in their new branch  git checkout develop git reset --hard LAST GOOD   develop is now back where it started

User · Answer

If you haven t yet pushed your changes  you can also do a soft reset   git reset --soft HEAD    This will revert the commit  but put the committed changes back into your index  Assuming the branches are relatively up-to-date with regard to each other  git will let you do a checkout into the other branch  whereupon you can simply commit   git checkout branch git commit   The disadvantage is that you need to re-enter your commit message

User · Answer

4 years late on the topic  but this might be helpful to someone   If you forgot to create a new branch before committing and committed all on master  no matter how many commits you did  the following approach is easier   git stash                         skip if all changes are committed git branch my feature git reset --hard origin master git checkout my feature git stash pop                     skip if all changes were committed   Now you have your master branch equals to origin master and all new commits are on my feature  Note that my feature is a local branch  not a remote one

User · Answer

If you already pushed your changes  you will need to force your next push after resetting the HEAD    git reset --hard HEAD  git merge COMMIT SHA1 git push --force   Warning  a hard reset will undo any uncommitted modifications in your working copy  while a force push will completely overwrite the state of the remote branch with the current state of the local branch   Just in case  on Windows  using the Windows command line  not Bash  it s actually four      instead of one  so it s   git reset --hard HEAD

User · Answer

For me  this was solved by reverting the commit I had pushed  then cherry-picking that commit to the other branch   git checkout branch that had the commit originally git revert COMMIT-HASH git checkout branch that was supposed to have the commit git cherry pick COMMIT-HASH   You can use git log to find the correct hash  and you can push these changes whenever you like

User · Answer

If you have a clean  un-modified  working copy  To rollback one commit  make sure you note the commit s hash for the next step    git reset --hard HEAD    To pull that commit into a different branch   git checkout other-branch git cherry-pick COMMIT-HASH   If you have modified or untracked changes  Also note that git reset --hard will kill any untracked and modified changes you might have  so if you have those you might prefer   git reset HEAD  git checkout

[git] How to fix committing to the wrong Git branch?

For multiple commits on the wrong branch

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