Undo a Git merge that hasn t been pushed yet

Question

Within my master branch  I did a git merge some-other-branch locally  but never pushed the changes to origin master  I didn t mean to merge  so I d like to undo it  When doing a git status after my merge  I was getting this message     On branch master   Your branch is ahead of  origin master  by 4 commits    Based upon some instructions I found  I tried running  git revert HEAD -m 1   but now I m getting this message with git status     On branch master   Your branch is ahead of  origin master  by 5 commits    I don t want my branch to be ahead by any number of commits  How do I get back to that point

User · Answer

Got to this question also looking to revert to match origin (ie, NO commits ahead of origin). Researching further, found there's a reset command for exactly that:

git reset --hard @{u}

Note: @{u} is shorthand for origin/master. (And, of course, you need that remote repository for this to work.)

User · Answer

If your merge and the corresponding commits were not pushed yet  you can always switch to another branch  delete the original one and re-create it   For example  I accidentally merged a develop branch into master and wanted to undo that  Using the following steps   git checkout develop git branch -D master git branch -t master origin master   Voila  Master is at the same stage as origin  and your mis-merged state is erased

User · Answer

You can use only two commands to revert a merge or restart by a specific commit    git reset --hard commitHash  you should use the commit that you want to restart  eg  44a587491e32eafa1638aca7738  git push origin HEAD --force  Sending the new local master branch to origin master    Good luck and go ahead

User · Answer

If you didn t commit it yet  you can only use    git checkout -f   It will undo the merge  and everything that you did

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With modern Git  you can   git merge --abort   Older syntax   git reset --merge   Old-school   git reset --hard   But actually  it is worth noticing that git merge --abort is only equivalent to git reset --merge given that MERGE HEAD is present  This can be read in the Git help for merge command   git merge --abort is equivalent to git reset --merge when MERGE HEAD is present    After a failed merge  when there is no MERGE HEAD  the failed merge can be undone with git reset --merge  but not necessarily with git merge --abort  so they are not only old and new syntax for the same thing   Personally I find git reset --merge much more powerful and useful in everyday work  so that s the one I always use

User · Answer

Okay  the answers other people here gave me were close  but it didn t work  Here s what I did   Doing this     git reset --hard HEAD  git status      gave me the following status     On branch master   Your branch and  origin master  have diverged    and have 3 and 3 different commit s  each  respectively    I then had to type in the same git reset command several more times   Each time I did that  the message changed by one as you can see below    gt  git reset --hard HEAD  HEAD is now at     truncated      gt  git status   On branch master   Your branch and  origin master  have diverged    and have 3 and 3 different commit s  each  respectively   gt  git reset --hard HEAD  HEAD is now at     truncated      gt  git status   On branch master   Your branch and  origin master  have diverged    and have 2 and 3 different commit s  each  respectively   gt  git reset --hard HEAD  HEAD is now at     truncated      gt  git status   On branch master   Your branch and  origin master  have diverged    and have 1 and 3 different commit s  each  respectively   gt  git reset --hard HEAD  HEAD is now at     truncated      gt  git status   On branch master   Your branch is behind  origin master  by 3 commits  and can be fast-forwarded    At this point  I saw the status message changed  so I tried doing a git pull  and that seemed to work    gt  git pull Updating 2df6af4  12bbd2f Fast forward  app views truncated      9       ---  app views truncated     13                app views truncated      2  -  3 files changed  20 insertions     4 deletions -   gt  git status   On branch master   So long story short  my commands came down to this   git reset --hard HEAD  git reset --hard HEAD  git reset --hard HEAD  git reset --hard HEAD  git pull

User · Answer

With git reflog check which commit is one prior the merge  git reflog will be a better option than git log   Then you can reset it using   git reset --hard commit sha   There s also another way   git reset --hard HEAD 1   It will get you back 1 commit   Be aware that any modified and uncommitted unstashed files will be reset to their unmodified state  To keep them either stash changes away or see --merge option below       As  Velmont suggested below in his answer  in this direct case using   git reset --hard ORIG HEAD   might yield better results  as it should preserve your changes  ORIG HEAD will point to a commit directly before merge has occurred  so you don t have to hunt for it yourself     A further tip is to use the --merge switch instead of --hard since it doesn t reset files unnecessarily   git reset --merge ORIG HEAD      --merge      Resets the index and updates the files in the working tree that are different between  lt commit gt  and HEAD  but keeps those which are different between the index and working tree  i e  which have changes which have not been added

User · Answer

You can use the git-reset command   git-reset - Reset current HEAD to the specified state  git reset  --mixed   --soft   --hard   --merge   -q     git reset  -q      --      git reset --patch     --         GIT-Reset

User · Answer

If you committed the merge   git reset HEAD 1   Make sure what you are reverting is in fact the merge files git add   git reset --hard

User · Answer

You have to change your HEAD  Not yours of course but git HEAD      So before answering let s add some background  explaining what is this HEAD   First of all what is HEAD   HEAD is simply a reference to the current commit  latest  on the current branch  There can only be a single HEAD at any given time   excluding git worktree   The content of HEAD is stored inside  git HEAD and it contains the 40 bytes SHA-1 of the current commit     detached HEAD  If you are not on the latest commit - meaning that HEAD is pointing to a prior commit in history its called detached HEAD     On the command line  it will look like this- SHA-1 instead of the branch name since the HEAD is not pointing to the tip of the current branch      A few options on how to recover from a detached HEAD     git checkout  git checkout  lt commit id gt  git checkout -b  lt new branch gt   lt commit id gt  git checkout HEAD X    x is the number of commits t go back   This will checkout new branch pointing to the desired commit  This command will checkout to a given commit  At this point  you can create a branch and start to work from this point on     Checkout a given commit     Doing so will result in a  detached HEAD  which mean that the  HEAD    is not pointing to the latest so you will need to checkout branch   in order to be able to update the code  git checkout  lt commit-id gt     create a new branch forked to the given commit git checkout -b  lt branch name gt      git reflog  You can always use the reflog as well  git reflog will display any change which updated the HEAD and checking out the desired reflog entry will set the HEAD back to this commit    Every time the HEAD is modified there will be a new entry in the reflog  git reflog git checkout HEAD         This will get you back to your desired commit      git reset --hard  lt commit id gt    Move  your HEAD back to the desired commit     This will destroy any local modifications    Don t do it if you have uncommitted work you want to keep  git reset --hard 0d1d7fc32    Alternatively  if there s work to keep  git stash git reset --hard 0d1d7fc32 git stash pop   This saves the modifications  then reapplies that patch after resetting    You could get merge conflicts if you ve modified things which were   changed since the commit you reset to     Note   Since Git 2 7  you can also use the git rebase --no-autostash as well      git revert  lt sha-1 gt    Undo  the given commit or commit range  The reset command will  undo  any changes made in the given commit  A new commit with the undo patch will be committed while the original commit will remain in the history as well     add new commit with the undo of the original one    the  lt sha-1 gt  can be any commit s  or commit range git revert  lt sha-1 gt      This schema illustrates which command does what  As you can see there reset  amp  amp  checkout modify the HEAD

User · Answer

The simplest answer is the one given by odinho - Velmont  First do git reset --merge ORIG HEAD  For those looking to reset after changes are pushed  do this  Because this is the first post seen for any git reset merge questions   git push origin HEAD --force  This will reset in a way that you won t get the merged changes back again after pull

User · Answer

It is strange that the simplest command was missing  Most answers work  but undoing the merge you just did  this is the easy and safe way   git reset --merge ORIG HEAD   The ref ORIG HEAD will point to the original commit from before the merge    The --merge option has nothing to do with the merge  It s just like git reset --hard ORIG HEAD  but safer since it doesn t touch uncommitted changes

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With newer Git versions  if you have not committed the merge yet and you have a merge conflict  you can simply do   git merge --abort   From man git merge       This  can only be run after the merge has resulted in conflicts  git merge --abort will abort the merge process and try to reconstruct the pre-merge state

User · Answer

You should reset to the previous commit  This should work   git reset --hard HEAD    Or even HEAD   to revert that revert commit  You can always give a full SHA reference if you re not sure how many steps back you should take   In case when you have problems and your master branch didn t have any local changes  you can reset to origin master

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You could use git reflog to find the previous checkout  Sometimes that s a good state you want to return back to   Concretely     git reflog   git reset --hard HEAD  0

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If you want a command-line solution  I suggest to just go with MBO s answer   If you re a newbie  you might like the graphical approach    Kick off gitk  from the command line  or right click in file browser if you have that  You can easily spot the merge commit there - the first node from the top with two parents Follow the link to the first left parent  the one on your current branch before the merge  usually red for me  On the selected commit  right-click  Reset branch  to here   pick the hard reset there

User · Answer

First  make sure that you ve committed everything  Then reset your repository to the previous working state     git reset f836e4c1fa51524658b9f026eb5efa24afaf3a36   or using --hard  this will remove all local  not committed changes       git reset f836e4c1fa51524658b9f026eb5efa24afaf3a36 --hard   Use the hash which was there before your wrongly merged commit  Check which commits you d like to re-commit on the top of the previous correct version by     git log 4c3e23f529b581c3cbe95350e84e66e3cb05704f  commit 4c3e23f529b581c3cbe95350e84e66e3cb05704f       commit 16b373a96b0a353f7454b141f7aa6f548c979d0a       Apply your right commits on the top of the right version of your repository by    By using cherry-pick  the changes introduced by some existing commits       git cherry-pick ec59ab844cf504e462f011c8cc7e5667ebb2e9c7  Or by cherry-picking the range of commits by    First checking the right changes before merging them   git diff 5216b24822ea1c48069f648449997879bb49c070  4c3e23f529b581c3cbe95350e84e66e3cb05704f  First checking the right changes before merging them   git cherry-pick 5216b24822ea1c48069f648449997879bb49c070  4c3e23f529b581c3cbe95350e84e66e3cb05704f   where this is the range of the correct commits which you ve committed  excluding wrongly committed merge

User · Answer

See chapter 4 in the Git book and the original post by Linus Torvalds   To undo a merge that was already pushed   git revert -m 1 commit hash   Be sure to revert the revert if you re committing the branch again  like Linus said

User · Answer

git stash git branch -d the local branch git checkout -t  lt name of remote gt  git stash apply   This worked for me

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Just for an extra option to look at  I ve been mostly following the branching model described here  http   nvie com posts a-successful-git-branching-model  and as such have been merging with --no-ff  no fast forward  usually     I just read this page as I d accidentally merged a testing branch instead of my release branch with master for deploying  website  master is what is live    The testing branch has two other branches merged to it and totals about six commits     So to revert the whole commit I just needed one git reset --hard HEAD  and it reverted the whole merge   Since the merges weren t fast forwarded the merge was a block and one step back is  branch not merged

User · Answer

If you are in a middle of merging you can always abort it git merge --abort

User · Answer

Just create new branch  then cherry-pick desired commits to it   Its saver and simpler then resets described in many answers above

User · Answer

It can be done multiple ways    1  Abort Merge  If you are in-between a bad merge  mistakenly done with wrong branch   and wanted to avoid the merge to go back to the branch latest as below   git merge --abort   2  Reset HEAD to remote branch  If you are working from remote develop branch  you can reset HEAD to the last commit on remote branch as below   git reset --hard origin develop   3  Delete current branch  and checkout again from the remote repository  Considering  you are working on develop branch in local repo  that syncs with remote develop branch  you can do as below   git checkout master    to delete one branch  you need to be on another branch  otherwise you will fall with the branch      git branch -D develop git checkout -b develop origin develop

User · Answer

Lately  I ve been using git reflog to help with this  This mostly only works if the merge JUST happened  and it was on your machine    git reflog might return something like   fbb0c0f HEAD  0   commit  merge   Merge branch  master  into my-branch 43b6032 HEAD  1   checkout  moving from master to my-branch e3753a7 HEAD  2   rebase finished  returning to refs heads master e3753a7 HEAD  3   pull --rebase  checkout e3753a71d92b032034dcb299d2df2edc09b5830e b41ea52 HEAD  4   reset  moving to HEAD  8400a0f HEAD  5   rebase  aborting   The first line indicates that a merge occurred  The 2nd line is the time before my merge  I simply git reset --hard 43b6032 to force this branch to track from before the merge  and carry-on

User · Answer

The simplest of the simplest chance  much simpler than anything said here   Remove your local branch  local  not remote  and pull it again  This way you ll undo the changes on your master branch and anyone will be affected by the change you don t want to push  Start it over

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Strategy  Create a new branch from where everything was good   Rationale  Reverting a merge is hard  There are too many solutions  depending on many factors such as whether you ve committed or pushed your merge or if there were new commits since your merge  Also you still need to have a relatively deep understanding of git to adapt these solutions to your case  If you blindly follow some instructions  you can end up with an  empty merge  where nothing will be merged  and further merge attempts will make Git tell you  Already up to date    Solution   Let s say you want to merge dev into feature-1    Find the revision that you want to receive the merge   git log --oneline feature-1 a1b2c3d4 Merge branch  dev  into  feature-1   lt -- the merge you want to undo e5f6g7h8 Fix NPE in the Zero Point Module  lt -- the one before the merge  you probably want this one  Check it out  go back in time    git checkout e5f6g7h8  Create a new branch from there and check it out   git checkout -b feature-1    Now you can restart your merge    Merge  git merge dev Fix your merge conflicts  Commit  git commit When you re satisfied with the results  delete the old branch  git branch --delete feature-1

User · Answer

Assuming your local master was not ahead of origin master  you should be able to do  git reset --hard origin master   Then your local master branch should look identical to origin master

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I was able to resolve this problem with a single command that doesn t involve looking up a commit id   git reset --hard remotes origin HEAD   The accepted answer didn t work for me but this command achieved the results I was looking for

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I think you can do git rebase -i  hash   branch name   where  hash  is the identifying hash for however far back you want to rewind plus one  or however many commits back you want to go  and then delete the lines for the commits in the editor that you don t want any more  Save the file  Exit  Pray  And it should be rewound  You might have to do a git reset --hard  but it should be good at this point  You can also use this to pull specific commits out of a stack  if you don t want to keep them in your history  but that can leave your repository in a state that you probably don t want

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If you notice that you need to revert immediately after the merge and you haven t done anything else after the merge attempt  you can just issue this command  git reset --hard HEAD  1    Essentially  your merge sha will be pointing to HEAD  0  if nothing else was committed after the merge and so HEAD  1  will be the previous point before the merge

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Answering the question  quot Undo a Git merge that hasn t been pushed yet quot   You can use git reset --hard HEAD 1  Consider the following situation where there are 2 branches master and feature-1     git log --graph --oneline --all    Do Git merge    git merge feature-1     git log --graph --oneline --all    Undo Git merge    git reset --hard HEAD 1     git log --graph --oneline --all

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In this case  you will want to reset your branch with git reset --hard  lt branch name gt   If you want to save your changes before reseting them be sure to create a new branch and git checkout  lt branch name gt    You can reset the state to a specific commit with git reset --hard  lt commit id gt  as well   If the changes have been pushed you can use git revert  lt branch name gt  instead  Be sure to check out how to use git revert and git checkout in other scenarios as well

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If branches are murge and not pushed  Then bellow git reset command will work to undo the merge  git reset --merge ORIG HEAD

[git] Undo a Git merge that hasn't been pushed yet

Examples related to git

Examples related to undo

Examples related to git-merge