Undo Git Rebase After Completion

Have you ever found yourself in a situation when you rebase your branch locally and then push your code to github, the file changes on the pull request gets all messed up?

Well, I've been there quite a few times. To avoid the situation I mostly prefer to use git merge instead of git rebase.

But if you are stuck in such a situation and don't want to close your PR only to reopen it with a new branch & brand new pull request this post might help.

Git reflog

git reflog

It'll list down all your git logs with the information about when the tips of branches and other references were updated in the local repository. That's what the reflog stands for Reference Logs. Once you find the commit-sha of your commit from where you started the rebase, use the command below.

git checkout commit-sha

It'll put the repository or your branch in a detached head state.

git switch -c new-branch-name

With the above command you can create a new branch which will be same as the state you were in before the rebase.

If you don't want a new branch then you can simply revert your current branch to state before rebase using the commands below.

git reset hard commit-sha

or

git reset hard HEAD@{2}

Learn more about git reflog Learn more about git switch

BONUS: git switch - acts like an undo command for your checkout steps.

Hope it was helpful. Thank you.