CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitgit-branchgit-detached-head
John W
John W

Reputation: 161

Restoring accidentally lost commit due to detached Head

I lost my code after switching to another branch (thought that I pushed it, but head was detached)

I switched from master to origin/somebranch Did some work there Then I had to quickly fix something in master, so I did git add -A git commit -m "some commit" git push git checkout master

I did it pretty fast, so I didn't read the message about head being detached... So a result when I switched back to somebranch, my changes were not there... Are my changes lost or there is a way to restore it?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 692

Answers (2)

Romain Valeri
Romain Valeri

Reputation: 22067

No, your commit is not lost, it would be at this point unreferenced by any branch (and, as such, candidate for garbage collection) but the reflog keeps a reference on it for some time (90 days by default, but you can check your config entry gc.reflogExpire) so you'll be able to recover it.

How? First possible method :

Condition : only if your terminal is still open with the output of previous operations.

If so, you'll be able to easily spot the hash of your commit :

git commit -m "Useful message here"
[master ec470f4] Useful message here
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

Just recreate a branch at this point :

git checkout -b recovered-branch ec470f4

If, for any reason, you do not have this opportunity (terminal closed, did a clear in the meantime, anything), no worries :

Second method, reflog

git reflog

lists all previous positions of HEAD, so just get the commit hash you want there and use the same command to recreate your branch.

Upvotes: 4

eftshift0
eftshift0

Reputation: 30317

Just check the reflof and find your commit and use that ID to create a new branch or move an already existing branch

git reflog
git branch -f some-branch the-id-of-the-revision

Upvotes: 2

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