Difference between reset and revert in Git - CLI Comparison

Introduction

Sometimes you want to undo changes in your project. Git offers two ways: reset and revert. They undo changes differently and affect your project history in unique ways.

When you want to completely remove recent commits from your project history before sharing with others.

When you want to undo a commit but keep the history intact for others to see what happened.

When you accidentally committed something and want to erase it as if it never happened.

When you want to fix a mistake by adding a new commit that cancels out the bad one.

When you want to clean your working directory and staging area to a previous state.

Commands

Shows the last 3 commits in short form to identify which commit to reset or revert.

Terminal

git log --oneline -3

Expected Output

a1b2c3d Fix typo in README

9f8e7d6 Add user login feature

4d5e6f7 Initial commit

→

--oneline - Shows each commit in one line for easy reading

→

-3 - Limits output to last 3 commits

Moves the current branch pointer back to commit 9f8e7d6 and discards all changes after it, including in working directory and staging area.

Terminal

git reset --hard 9f8e7d6

Expected Output

No output (command runs silently)

→

--hard - Resets working directory and staging area to match the commit

Verifies that the branch history now ends at commit 9f8e7d6 after reset.

Terminal

git log --oneline -3

Expected Output

9f8e7d6 Add user login feature

4d5e6f7 Initial commit

→

--oneline - Shows each commit in one line

→

-3 - Limits output to last 3 commits

Creates a new commit that undoes the changes introduced by commit a1b2c3d, preserving history.

Terminal

git revert a1b2c3d

Expected Output

[main 7g8h9i0] Revert "Fix typo in README"

 1 file changed, 1 deletion(-)

Shows the last 3 commits including the new revert commit.

Terminal

git log --oneline -3

Expected Output

7g8h9i0 Revert "Fix typo in README"

a1b2c3d Fix typo in README

9f8e7d6 Add user login feature

→

--oneline - Shows commits in one line

→

-3 - Limits output to last 3 commits

Key Concept

If you remember nothing else, remember: reset changes history by moving branch pointer and can erase commits, while revert adds a new commit to undo changes without changing history.

Common Mistakes

Using git reset --hard on a shared branch

It rewrites history and can cause problems for others who already pulled those commits.

Use git revert to safely undo changes on shared branches.

Expecting git revert to remove commits from history

Revert does not remove commits; it adds a new commit that undoes changes.

Understand revert preserves history and is safe for public branches.

Not specifying --hard with git reset when wanting to discard changes

Without --hard, reset only moves the branch pointer but leaves working files unchanged.

Use git reset --hard to reset both history and working directory.

Summary

git reset moves the branch pointer and can erase commits and changes.

git revert creates a new commit that undoes a previous commit without changing history.

Use reset for local undo before sharing; use revert for safe undo on shared branches.