Recovering

Recovering from a lost commit

In case you have reverted back to a past commit and lost a newer commit you can recover the lost commit by running

git reflog

Then find your lost commit, and reset back to it by doing

git reset HEAD --hard <sha1-of-commit>

Restore a deleted file after a commit

In case you have accidentally commited a delete on a file and later realized that you need it back.

First find the commit id of the commit that deleted your file.

git log --diff-filter=D --summary

Will give you a sorted summary of commits which deleted files.

Then proceed to restore the file by

git checkout 81eeccf~1 <your-lost-file-name>

(Replace 81eeccf with your own commit id)

Restore file to a previous version

To restore a file to a previous version you can use reset.

git reset <sha1-of-commit> <file-name>

If you have already made local changes to the file (that you do not require!) you can also use the --hard option

Recover a deleted branch

To recover a deleted branch you need to find the commit which was the head of your deleted branch by running

git reflog

You can then recreate the branch by running

git checkout -b <branch-name> <sha1-of-commit>

You will not be able to recover deleted branches if git’s garbage collector deleted dangling commits - those without refs. Always have a backup of your repository, especially when you work in a small team / proprietary project

Recovering from a reset

With Git, you can (almost) always turn the clock back

Don’t be afraid to experiment with commands that rewrite history*. Git doesn’t delete your commits for 90 days by default, and during that time you can easily recover them from the reflog:

$ git reset @~3   # go back 3 commits
$ git reflog
c4f708b HEAD@{0}: reset: moving to @~3
2c52489 HEAD@{1}: commit: more changes
4a5246d HEAD@{2}: commit: make important changes
e8571e4 HEAD@{3}: commit: make some changes
... earlier commits ...
$ git reset 2c52489
... and you're back where you started

• Watch out for options like --hard and --force though — they can discard data.
  
• Also, avoid rewriting history on any branches you’re collaborating on.

Recover from git stash

To get your most recent stash after running git stash, use

git stash apply

To see a list of your stashes, use

git stash list

You will get a list that looks something like this

stash@{0}: WIP on master: 67a4e01 Merge tests into develop
stash@{1}: WIP on master: 70f0d95 Add user role to localStorage on user login

Choose a different git stash to restore with the number that shows up for the stash you want

git stash apply stash@{2}

You can also choose ‘git stash pop’, it works same as ‘git stash apply’ like..

git stash pop

or

git stash pop stash@{2}

Difference in git stash apply and git stash pop…

git stash pop:- stash data will be remove from stack of stash list.

Ex:-

git stash list

You will get a list that looks something like this

stash@{0}: WIP on master: 67a4e01 Merge tests into develop
stash@{1}: WIP on master: 70f0d95 Add user role to localStorage on user login

Now pop stash data using command

git stash pop

Again Check for stash list

git stash list

You will get a list that looks something like this

stash@{0}: WIP on master: 70f0d95 Add user role to localStorage on user login

You can see one stash data is removed (popped) from stash list and stash@{1} became stash@{0}.