How to revert multiple git commits

Question

I have a git repository that looks like this  A  lt - B  lt - C  lt - D  lt - HEAD  I want the head of the branch to point to A  i e  I want B  C  D  and HEAD to disappear and I want head to be synonymous with A  It sounds like I can either try to rebase  doesn t apply  since I ve pushed changes in between   or revert  But how do I revert multiple commits  Do I revert one at a time  Is the order important

User · Answer

Probably less elegant than other approaches here, but I've always used get reset --hard HEAD~N to undo multiple commits, where N is the number of commits you want to go back.

Or, if unsure of the exact number of commits, just running git reset --hard HEAD^ (which goes back one commit) multiple times until you reach the desired state.

User · Answer

I m so frustrated that this question can t just be answered   Every other question is in relation to how to revert correctly and preserve history   This question says  I want the head of the branch to point to A  i e  I want B  C  D  and HEAD to disappear and I want head to be synonymous with A    git checkout  lt branch name gt  git reset --hard  lt commit Hash for A gt  git push -f   I learned a lot reading Jakub s post  but some guy in the company  with access to push to our  testing  branch without Pull-Request  pushed like 5 bad commits trying to fix and fix and fix a mistake he made 5 commits ago   Not only that  but one or two Pull Requests were accepted  which were now bad   So forget it  I found the last good commit  abc1234  and just ran the basic script   git checkout testing git reset --hard abc1234 git push -f   I told the other 5 guys working in this repo that they better make note of their changes for the last few hours and Wipe Re-Branch from the latest testing   End of the story

User · Answer

Expanding what I wrote in a comment The general rule is that you should not rewrite  change  history that you have published  because somebody might have based their work on it   If you rewrite  change  history  you would make problems with merging their changes and with updating for them  So the solution is to create a new commit which reverts changes that you want to get rid of   You can do this using git revert command  You have the following situation   A  lt -- B   lt -- C  lt -- D                                   lt -- master  lt -- HEAD   arrows here refers to the direction of the pointer  the  quot parent quot  reference in the case of commits  the top commit in the case of branch head  branch ref   and the name of branch in the case of HEAD reference   What you need to create is the following   A  lt -- B   lt -- C  lt -- D  lt --   BCD -1                     lt -- master  lt -- HEAD  where   BCD  -1  means the commit that reverts changes in commits B  C  D   Mathematics tells us that  BCD -1   D-1 C-1 B-1  so you can get the required situation using the following commands    git revert --no-commit D   git revert --no-commit C   git revert --no-commit B   git commit -m  quot the commit message for all of them quot   Works for everything except merge commits   Alternate solution would be to checkout contents of commit A  and commit this state   Also works with merge commits   Added files will not be deleted  however   If you have any local changes git stash them first    git checkout -f A --     checkout that revision over the top of local files   git commit -a  Then you would have the following situation   A  lt -- B   lt -- C  lt -- D  lt -- A                         lt -- master  lt -- HEAD  The commit A  has the same contents as commit A  but is a different commit  commit message  parents  commit date    Alternate solution by Jeff Ferland  modified by Charles Bailey builds upon the same idea  but uses git reset   Here it is slightly modified  this way WORKS FOR EVERYTHING    git reset --hard A   git reset --soft D    or ORIG HEAD or   1   previous location of HEAD    all of which are D   git commit

User · Answer

Clean way which I found useful git revert --no-commit HEAD 3    This command reverts last 3 commits with only one commit  Also doesn t rewrite history  The    helps create a range  Meaning HEAD 3   is the same as HEAD 3  HEAD

User · Answer

In my opinion a very easy and clean way could be   go back to A  git checkout -f A   point master s head to the current state  git symbolic-ref HEAD refs heads master   save  git commit

User · Answer

First be sure that your working copy is not modified  Then  git diff --binary HEAD commit sha you want to revert to   git apply  and then just commit  Don t forget to document what s the reason for revert

User · Answer

git reset --hard a git reset --mixed d git commit   That will act as a revert for all of them at once  Give a good commit message

User · Answer

This is an expansion of one of the solutions provided in Jakub s answer  I was faced with a situation where the commits I needed to roll back were somewhat complex  with several of the commits being merge commits  and I needed to avoid rewriting history   I was not able to use a series of git revert commands because I eventually ran into conflicts between the reversion changes being added   I ended up using the following steps   First  check out the contents of the target commit while leaving HEAD at the tip of the branch     git checkout -f  lt target-commit gt  --      The -- makes sure  lt target-commit gt  is interpreted as a commit rather than a file  the   refers to the current directory    Then  determine what files were added in the commits being rolled back  and thus need to be deleted     git diff --name-status --cached  lt target-commit gt    Files that were added should show up with an  A  at the beginning of the line  and there should be no other differences   Now  if any files need to be removed  stage these files for removal     git rm  lt filespec gt    lt filespec gt         Finally  commit the reversion     git commit -m  revert to  lt target-commit gt     If desired  make sure that we re back to the desired state    git diff  lt target-commit gt   lt current-commit gt    There should be no differences

User · Answer

If you  have a merged commit and you are not able to revert  and you don t mind squashing the history you are to revert   then you can git reset --soft HEAD  number of commits you d like to revert  git commit -m  quot The stuff you didn t like  quot  git log   copy the hash of your last commit git revert  lt hash of your last  squashed  commit gt   Then when you want to push your changes remember to use the -f flag because you modified the history git push  lt your fork gt   lt your branch gt  -f

User · Answer

The easy way to revert a group of commits on shared repository  that people use and you want to preserve the history  is to use git revert in conjunction with git rev-list  The latter one will provide you with a list of commits  the former will do the revert itself  There are two ways to do that  If you want the revert multiple commits in a single commit use  for i in  git rev-list  lt first-commit-sha gt     lt last-commit-sha gt    do git revert --no-commit  i  done  this will revert a group of commits you need  but leave all the changes on your working tree  you should commit them all as usual afterward  Another option is to have a single commit per reverted change  for i in  git rev-list  lt first-commit-sha gt     lt last-commit-sha gt    do git revert --no-edit -s  i  done  For instance  if you have a commit tree like  o---o---o---o---o---o--- gt      fff eee ddd ccc bbb aaa  to revert the changes from eee to bbb  run for i in  git rev-list eee   bbb   do git revert --no-edit -s  i  done

User · Answer

Similar to Jakub s answer  this allows you to easily select consecutive commits to revert     revert all commits from B to HEAD  inclusively   git revert --no-commit B  HEAD     git commit -m  message

User · Answer

None of those worked for me  so I had three commits to revert  the last three commits   so I did   git revert HEAD git revert HEAD 2 git revert HEAD 4 git rebase -i HEAD 3   pick  squash  squash   Worked like a charm

User · Answer

For doing so you just have to use the revert command  specifying the range of commits you want to get reverted  Taking into account your example  you d have to do this  assuming you re on branch  master    git revert master 3  master  or git revert B   D or git revert D C B This will create a new commit in your local with the inverse commit of B  C and D  meaning that it will undo changes introduced by these commits   A  lt - B  lt - C  lt - D  lt - BCD   lt - HEAD

User · Answer

I really wanted to avoid hard resets  this is what I came up with  A - gt  B - gt  C - gt  D - gt  HEAD  To go back to A  which is 4 steps back   git pull                    Get latest changes git reset --soft HEAD 4     Set back 4 steps git stash                   Stash the reset git pull                    Go back to head git stash pop               Pop the reset  git commit -m  quot Revert quot       Commit the changes

User · Answer

If you want to temporarily revert the commits of a feature  then you can use the series of following commands   Here is how it works  git log --pretty oneline   grep  feature name    cut -d     -f1   xargs -n1 git revert --no-edit

[git] How to revert multiple git commits?

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