Last week, I deleted a git branch that had a number of local commits. In fact, there were many occasions in the past where I thought I lost a lot of work, due to a faulty git command. Each time, the git reflog
was always there to prevent disaster. If you know how to use Git Reflog, you too may save yourself from disaster.
I normally work on multiple features and therefore have multiple branches at one time. I also love to keep my workstation clean by removing all branches that I am done with.
Last week, I accidentally committed some of my new work onto an old branch.
After my normal cleanup process, I realized I just deleted hours' worth of work.
This is where git reflog
comes in.
This git command displays a history of every point the reference at HEAD changed. More importantly, it has a record of my lost commits.
From there I was able to cherry-pick the commits I needed and revive them on a different branch.
If you find yourself in a similar situation where you deleted the wrong branch or reset --hard
the wrong commit, git reflog is by your side.
In my case, I checked out a new branch.
Then, cherry-picked my commits.
If you are unfamiliar with the git-cherry-pick
command, basically what it does is take a commit from somewhere else, and "play it back" wherever you are right now. Because this introduces the same change with a different parent, Git builds a new commit with a different ID.
Looking at my git log
output, my commits were back. I was safe.
Working with something as volatile as code can be a scary thing. So befriend git reflog
because it will always have your back, save you from losing hours of hard work and headaches.