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Rewind to a Specific Commit in Git

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Introduction

This article covers the following tech skills:

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🧑‍💻 New to Git or LabEx? We recommend starting with the Quick Start with Git course.

Git is a powerful version control system that allows developers to track changes made to their codebase. One of the most useful features of Git is the ability to rewind back to a specific commit. This can be helpful when you need to undo changes or revert to an earlier version of your code.

Rewind to a Specific Commit

As a developer, you may need to undo changes made to your codebase. For example, you may have made a mistake and need to go back to an earlier version of your code. In this challenge, you will use Git to rewind back to a specific commit in a repository.

To complete this lab, you will use the Git repository git-playground from https://github.com/labex-labs/git-playground.git. Follow these steps to complete the challenge:

  1. Clone the repository to your local machine: 
git clone https://github.com/labex-labs/git-playground.git
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  1. Navigate to the repository: 
cd git-playground
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  1. View the commit history of the repository: 
git log --oneline
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  1. Make sure that the commit message you want to rewind to is the "Initial commit" commit hash.
  2. Use the command git reset <commit> to rewind back to the specified commit. For example, you want to rewind back to the commit with hash 3050fc0d3: 
git reset 3050fc0d3
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  1. View the commit history of the repository again: 
git log --oneline
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  1. If you want to delete the changes and revert to the earlier version of your code, use the command git reset --hard <commit>. For example, you want to delete the changes and revert to the commit with hash c0d30f305: 
git reset --hard c0d30f305
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This is the result of running git log --oneline:

c0d30f305 (HEAD -> master) Initial commit
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Summary

Rewinding back to a specific commit is a useful feature of Git that allows developers to undo changes or revert to an earlier version of their code. In this lab, you used Git to rewind back to a specific commit in a repository. Remember to use git reset to rewind back to a specific commit and git reset --hard to delete changes and revert to an earlier version of your code.

🚀 Practice Now: Rewind to a Specific Commit

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