Reputation: 3273

Can I revert commits directly on GitHub?

It seems like you can do just about everything else directly on GitHub using the web interface, like edit and create and delete files, but I am unable to find a way to revert a commit, like you can in the GitHub local apps (Windows, and Mac) and like you can do on the git command line.

I'm just wondering am I just missing something. Is the revert button hidden?

I tried searching online and came across something that seemed to suggest that this was to prevent synchronization errors when working with lots of people. Is this correct?

Upvotes: 135

Answers (5)

Caveman

Reputation: 2955

It really depends on how the repo is set up and how much of the history you want to keep.

You can delete the commit by using this and deleting the line with the commit you don't want. This could also mess up histories of other people. People usually don't know git well enough to do git reset --hard origin/main so I'd not recommend it.

git rebase HEAD^1 -i
# do stuff
git push origin main -f 
# absolutely playing with fire here

On PRs there's a revert button that creates as revert PR to undo all the changes in that PR which is pretty useful. It has a downside where if you want to push the same changes again, just fixed instead of broken, you'll have to put them all back in again, revert the revert, delete both and merge again or reimplement the changes by using a combo of git checkout branch-with-changes, git reset --soft branch-without-changes, git stash, git checkout main, git checkout second-try and git stash pop`.

Currently on my team we're doing reverts with the Github gui, then reverting the revert and cancelling the CI/CD manually. This leaves the main broken but since we deploy on "production" it's fine.

Upvotes: 0

VonC

Reputation: 1323883

No, that feature isn't directly available on the GitHub web interface (as opposed to the "Revert" button recently added for GitHub for Mac/Windows)

Actually, it is for pull requests only, since June 24th, 2014:

Introducing the Revert Button

you can easily revert a pull request on GitHub by clicking Revert:

You'll be prompted to create a new pull request with the reverted changes:

git revert is a bit more complex to manage through the web as it can accept a range of commits.
It shouldn't be an issue in terms of collaboration though: a revert adds a new commit, it doesn't change the history of existing commits.

Upvotes: 74

vohrahul

Reputation: 1191

If you want to use just github web. There is a tedious way though.

Step 1. Goto commit history, find the commit hash which you want to revert to; and click "Browse repo at this point in history"

Step 2. Create a new branch from this commit hash (say "temp")

Step 3. Delete the branch which had the problem (say "main")

Step 4. Goto "temp" branch and create "main" branch from it. And you're done.

Ofcourse, this is not a good way and it might only work for recently created commits.

Upvotes: 21

Mohamed

Reputation: 822

You can't revert back to that commit on the GitHub web site, there is no option to do this action, Instead, you should use command-line or GitHub Desktop as below

After REVERT, do not forget to PUSH the code. For more details, check the link How to restore deleted files on GitHub website?

Upvotes: 10

Zia Ullah

Reputation: 323

This worked for me (GITHUB).

 1) git reset --hard HEAD^   
 2) git push origin -f

Note:- These lines reverts commit back one by one.

Upvotes: 2

Can I revert commits directly on GitHub?

Answers (5)

Introducing the Revert Button

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