Undo – remove a commit and retain the changes to files

Instead of performing the hard reset and thereby losing all the changes the commit introduced, the reset can be performed so that the changes are retained in the working directory.

Getting ready

We'll again use the example of the hello world repository. Make a fresh clone of the repository, or reset the master branch if you have already cloned one.

You can make a fresh clone as follows:

$ git clone https://github.com/dvaske/hello_world_cookbook.git
$ cd hello_world_cookbook

You can reset the existing clone as follows:

$ cd hello_world_cookbook
$ git checkout master
$ git reset --hard origin master
HEAD is now at 3061dc6 Adds Java version of 'hello world'

How to do it...

1. First, we'll check whether we have made no changes to files in the working tree (just for the clarity of the example) and the history of the repository:

   $ git status
   On branch master
   Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
   
   nothing to commit, working directory clean...