How to fix committing to the wrong Git branch?

Solution 1:

If you haven't yet pushed your changes, you can also do a soft reset:

git reset --soft HEAD^

This will revert the commit, but put the committed changes back into your index. Assuming the branches are relatively up-to-date with regard to each other, git will let you do a checkout into the other branch, whereupon you can simply commit:

git checkout branch
git commit -c ORIG_HEAD

The -c ORIG_HEAD part is useful to not type commit message again.

Solution 2:

4 years late on the topic, but this might be helpful to someone.

If you forgot to create a new branch before committing and committed all on master, no matter how many commits you did, the following approach is easier:

git stash                       # skip if all changes are committed
git branch my_feature
git reset --hard origin/master
git checkout my_feature
git stash pop                   # skip if all changes were committed

Now you have your master branch equals to origin/master and all new commits are on my_feature. Note that my_feature is a local branch, not a remote one.

Solution 3:

If you have a clean (un-modified) working copy

To rollback one commit (make sure you note the commit's hash for the next step):

git reset --hard HEAD^

To pull that commit into a different branch:

git checkout other-branch
git cherry-pick COMMIT-HASH

If you have modified or untracked changes

Also note that git reset --hard will kill any untracked and modified changes you might have, so if you have those you might prefer:

git reset HEAD^
git checkout .

Solution 4:

If you already pushed your changes, you will need to force your next push after resetting the HEAD.

git reset --hard HEAD^
git merge COMMIT_SHA1
git push --force

Warning: a hard reset will undo any uncommitted modifications in your working copy, while a force push will completely overwrite the state of the remote branch with the current state of the local branch.

Just in case, on Windows (using the Windows command line, not Bash) it's actually four ^^^^ instead of one, so it's

git reset --hard HEAD^^^^

Solution 5:

I recently did the same thing, where I accidentally committed a change to master, when I should have committed to other-branch. But I didn't push anything.

If you just committed to the wrong branch, and have not changed anything since, and have not pushed to the repo, then you can do the following:

// rewind master to point to the commit just before your most recent commit.
// this takes all changes in your most recent commit, and turns them into unstaged changes. 
git reset HEAD~1 

// temporarily save your unstaged changes as a commit that's not attached to any branch using git stash
// all temporary commits created with git stash are put into a stack of temporary commits.
git stash

// create other-branch (if the other branch doesn't already exist)
git branch other-branch

// checkout the other branch you should have committed to.
git checkout other-branch

// take the temporary commit you created, and apply all of those changes to the new branch. 
//This also deletes the temporary commit from the stack of temp commits.
git stash pop

// add the changes you want with git add...

// re-commit your changes onto other-branch
git commit -m "some message..."

NOTE: in the above example, I was rewinding 1 commit with git reset HEAD~1. But if you wanted to rewind n commits, then you can do git reset HEAD~n.

Also, if you ended up committing to the wrong branch, and also ended up write some more code before realizing that you committed to the wrong branch, then you could use git stash to save your in-progress work:

// save the not-ready-to-commit work you're in the middle of
git stash 

// rewind n commits
git reset HEAD~n 

// stash the committed changes as a single temp commit onto the stack. 
git stash 

// create other-branch (if it doesn't already exist)
git branch other-branch

// checkout the other branch you should have committed to.
git checkout other-branch

// apply all the committed changes to the new branch
git stash pop

// add the changes you want with git add...

// re-commit your changes onto the new branch as a single commit.
git commit -m "some message..."

// pop the changes you were in the middle of and continue coding
git stash pop

NOTE: I used this website as a reference https://www.clearvision-cm.com/blog/what-to-do-when-you-commit-to-the-wrong-git-branch/