How to Undo the Most Recent Local Commits in Git

If you have made some local commits in your Git repository and want to undo the most recent ones, you can follow these steps to accomplish it:

Check Your Git Status

Before proceeding with the undo, it's always a good idea to check the status of your repository. Open a terminal or command prompt and navigate to your Git project's root directory. Use the following command to see the current status:

git status

Review Your Commits

To see the recent commits and find the one you want to undo, use the following command to view the commit log:

git log

The commit log will display the most recent commits at the top. Each commit will have a unique identifier (SHA-1 hash), a commit message, the author, and the date of the commit.

Undo the Most Recent Commits

Soft Reset

If you want to keep the changes from the undone commits in your working directory (i.e., the changes you made in those commits), you can perform a soft reset. This will remove the commits from the branch's history but leave the changes staged (ready to be committed again).

Use the following command to perform a soft reset:

git reset --soft HEAD~1

The HEAD~1 means "one commit before the current HEAD" (i.e., the most recent commit). If you want to undo more than one commit, you can change the number accordingly (e.g., HEAD~2, HEAD~3, and so on).

Hard Reset

If you want to completely discard the changes from the undone commits and reset your branch to the state it was in before those commits, you can perform a hard reset.

Important: Be cautious when using a hard reset, as it will permanently remove the changes from the undone commits.

Use the following command to perform a hard reset:

git reset --hard HEAD~1

As with the soft reset, you can change the number to undo more than one commit.

Update the Remote Repository (Optional)

If you have already pushed these unwanted commits to a remote repository (e.g., GitHub), and you want to synchronize the remote repository with your local changes, you will need to force push the changes.

Note: Be cautious when using force push, as it rewrites the history of the remote repository.

Use the following command to force push:

git push -f origin <branch-name>

Replace <branch-name> with the name of the branch you are working on.