Git is hard: screwing up is easy, and figuring out how to fix your mistakes is fucking impossible. Git documentation has this chicken and egg problem where you can't search for how to get yourself out of a mess, unless you already know the name of the thing you need to know about in order to fix your problem. So here are some bad situations I've gotten myself into, and how I eventually got myself out of them in plain english.

Oh shit, I did something terribly wrong, please tell me git has a magic time machine!?! git reflog # you will see a list of every thing you've # done in git, across all branches! # each one has an index HEAD@{index} # find the one before you broke everything git reset HEAD@{index} # magic time machine You can use this to get back stuff you accidentally deleted, or just to remove some stuff you tried that broke the repo, or to recover after a bad merge, or just to go back to a time when things actually worked. I use reflog A LOT. Mega hat tip to the many many many many many people who suggested adding it!

Oh shit, I committed and immediately realized I need to make one small change! # make your change git add . # or add individual files git commit --amend --no-edit # now your last commit contains that change! # WARNING: never amend public commits This usually happens to me if I commit, then run tests/linters... and FML, I didn't put a space after an equals sign. You could also make the change as a new commit and then do rebase -i in order to squash them both together, but this is about a million times faster. Warning: You should never amend commits that have been pushed up to a public/shared branch! Only amend commits that only exist in your local copy or you're gonna have a bad time.

Oh shit, I need to change the message on my last commit! git commit --amend # follow prompts to change the commit message Stupid commit message formatting requirements.

Oh shit, I accidentally committed something to master that should have been on a brand new branch! # create a new branch from the current state of master git branch some-new-branch-name # remove the last commit from the master branch git reset HEAD~ --hard git checkout some-new-branch-name # your commit lives in this branch now :) Note: this doesn't work if you've already pushed the commit to a public/shared branch, and if you tried other things first, you might need to git reset HEAD@{number-of-commits-back} instead of HEAD~ . Infinite sadness. Also, many many many people suggested an awesome way to make this shorter that I didn't know myself. Thank you all!

Oh shit, I accidentally committed to the wrong branch! # undo the last commit, but leave the changes available git reset HEAD~ --soft git stash # move to the correct branch git checkout name-of-the-correct-branch git stash pop git add . # or add individual files git commit -m "your message here"; # now your changes are on the correct branch A lot of people have suggested using cherry-pick for this situation too, so take your pick on whatever one makes the most sense to you! git checkout name-of-the-correct-branch # grab the last commit to master git cherry-pick master # delete it from master git checkout master git reset HEAD~ --hard

Oh shit, I tried to run a diff but nothing happened?! If you know that you made changes to files, but diff is empty, you probably add -ed your files to staging and you need to use a special flag. git diff --staged File under ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (yes, I know this is a feature, not a bug, but it's fucking baffling and non-obvious the first time it happens to you!)

Oh shit, I need to undo a commit from like 5 commits ago! # find the commit you need to undo git log # use the arrow keys to scroll up and down in history # once you've found your commit, save the hash git revert [saved hash] # git will create a new commit that undoes that commit # follow prompts to edit the commit message # or just save and commit Turns out you don't have to track down and copy-paste the old file contents into the existing file in order to undo changes! If you committed a bug, you can undo the commit all in one go with revert . You can also revert a single file instead of a full commit! But of course, in true git fashion, it's a completely different set of fucking commands...

Oh shit, I need to undo my changes to a file! # find a hash for a commit before the file was changed git log # use the arrow keys to scroll up and down in history # once you've found your commit, save the hash git checkout [saved hash] -- path/to/file # the old version of the file will be in your index git commit -m "Wow, you don't have to copy-paste to undo" When I finally figured this out it was HUGE. HUGE. H-U-G-E. But seriously though, on what fucking planet does checkout -- make sense as the best way to undo a file? :shakes-fist-at-linus-torvalds:

Fuck this noise, I give up. cd .. sudo rm -r fucking-git-repo-dir git clone https://some.github.url/fucking-git-repo-dir.git cd fucking-git-repo-dir Thanks to Eric V. for this one. All complaints about the use of sudo in this joke can be directed to him. For real though, if your branch is sooo borked that you need to reset the state of your repo to be the same as the remote repo in a "git-approved" way, try this, but beware these are destructive and unrecoverable actions! # get the lastest state of origin git fetch origin git checkout master git reset --hard origin/master # delete untracked files and directories git clean -d --force # repeat checkout/reset/clean for each borked branch