Recovering from hard reset in Git - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Recovering from Hard Reset in Git

📖 Scenario: You accidentally ran a git reset --hard command and lost some recent commits. You want to recover those commits using Git's reflog feature.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to use git reflog to find lost commits and recover your work after a hard reset.

📋 What You'll Learn

Use git reflog to view recent HEAD changes

Identify the commit hash before the hard reset

Use git reset --hard <commit-hash> to restore the lost commits

Verify the recovery by checking the commit log

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Developers often accidentally lose commits after a hard reset. Knowing how to recover them quickly saves time and prevents data loss.

💼 Career

Understanding Git recovery techniques is essential for software developers, DevOps engineers, and anyone working with version control to maintain code integrity.

1

View the Git reflog

Run the command git reflog to see the recent changes to HEAD including the hard reset.

Git

# Your code here

Need a hint?

The git reflog command shows a list of recent HEAD positions, including commits before the reset.

2

Identify the commit hash before the hard reset

Look at the output of git reflog and copy the commit hash that was the HEAD before the hard reset. Assign this hash to a variable called commit_hash in your shell (e.g., commit_hash=abc1234).

Git

git reflog
# Assign the commit hash before the reset to commit_hash
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Find the commit hash from the reflog output just before the reset and assign it to commit_hash.

3

Reset hard to the previous commit

Use the command git reset --hard $commit_hash to restore the repository state to the commit before the hard reset.

Git

git reflog
commit_hash=abc1234
# Run the hard reset to recover commits
# Your code here

Need a hint?

This command moves HEAD back to the commit before the reset, recovering lost commits.

4

Verify the recovery

Run git log --oneline -5 to check the latest 5 commits and confirm your lost commits are restored.

Git

git reflog
commit_hash=abc1234
git reset --hard $commit_hash
# Verify the commit history
# Your code here

Need a hint?

The git log --oneline -5 command shows recent commits in short form to verify recovery.