Revert a Change

This section shows how to "undo" a previous commit. Git accomplishes this by applying the reverse changes, hence the entire commit history is intact.

Revert is doing a commit

Git has the principle of protecting data integrity. Hence if you decide to roll back, instead of truncating the commit history, it's adding the reverse change as a new commit. Git infers the reverse changes from the commit you want to undo.

In action

Let's create a new file, then revert it.

First, create a new file and make a commit.

D:\Work\git-prj (master)
λ echo import this > anotherfile.py

D:\Work\git-prj (master)
λ git status
On branch master
Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
        anotherfile.py

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

D:\Work\git-prj (master)
λ git add anotherfile.py

D:\Work\git-prj (master)
λ git commit -m "Added another file"
[master 35ac407] Added another file
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
 create mode 100644 anotherfile.py

D:\Work\git-prj (master)
λ git log --oneline
35ac407 (HEAD -> master) Added another file
ee7ebbd Print out the std dev
b1e55d3 Print out the mean
c96c526 First commit

D:\Work\git-prj (master)
λ ls
anotherfile.py  myfile.py

We can see at the end, we have anotherfile.py. Now, if we revert this commit::

We can see anotherfile.py is gone. The reversion annihilates the file creation in this commit.

Information is still there

If we look at the commit history:

We can see the original commit to create the file (35ac407) is in the commit history. This means if we check out the corresponding commit, we can still see anotherfile.py:

The undo is performed, while data integrity is not compromised.

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