Beginner · 6 min read

restore, reset, revert: which one?

Three commands that “undo”, three very different results. The cheat sheet you'll come back to.

restore: undo changes in files

Puts a file back to its last committed (or staged) state. Nothing about history changes. Without --staged, your uncommitted edits to that file are lost.

Safe

$ git restore --staged path/to/file
$ git restore path/to/file

reset: move the branch backwards

Moves your branch to an older commit. --soft keeps the changes staged, --mixed (default) keeps them unstaged, --hard throws them away. It rewrites history: local commits only.

Safe

$ git reset --soft HEAD~1

revert: cancel a commit publicly

Creates a new commit that does the opposite of an old one. History is preserved, so it is safe on shared branches. When in doubt on main, revert.

Safe

$ git revert <commit>