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gitcommand-lineundogit-reset

git undo all uncommitted or unsaved changes


I'm trying to undo all changes since my last commit. I tried git reset --hard and git reset --hard HEAD after viewing this post. I responds with head is now at 18c3773... but when I look at my local source all the files are still there. What am I missing?


Solution

    • This will unstage all files you might have staged with git add:

        git reset
      
    • This will revert all local uncommitted changes (should be executed in repo root):

        git checkout .
      

      You can also revert uncommitted changes only to particular file or directory:

        git checkout [some_dir|file.txt]
      

      Yet another way to revert all uncommitted changes (longer to type, but works from any subdirectory):

        git reset --hard HEAD
      
    • This will remove all local untracked files, so only git tracked files remain:

        git clean -fdx
      

      WARNING: -x will also remove all ignored files, including ones specified by .gitignore! You may want to use -n for preview of files to be deleted.


    To sum it up: executing commands below is basically equivalent to fresh git clone from original source (but it does not re-download anything, so is much faster):

    git reset
    git checkout .
    git clean -fdx
    

    Typical usage for this would be in build scripts, when you must make sure that your tree is absolutely clean - does not have any modifications or locally created object files or build artefacts, and you want to make it work very fast and to not re-clone whole repository every single time.