Git Recovery Guide: How to Undo Almost Any Mistake Without Losing Work
Git almost never permanently deletes work — lost commits are typically orphaned and still stored in Git's object database until garbage collection removes them. Two key safety nets, the reflog and git fsck, allow developers to locate and restore commit hashes even after accidental resets, deleted branches, or botched rebases. Commands like git restore, git reset --soft, and git commit --amend handle most local undo scenarios, while git revert is the safer option for reversing commits already pushed to shared branches. The critical distinction is that reset rewrites history and suits local changes, whereas revert creates a new reversing commit that keeps shared history intact. Knowing which recovery command matches each situation can save hours of work, especially since uncommitted changes discarded via git restore cannot be recovered through the reflog.
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