How to cancel a local git commit?

My issue is I have changed a file e.g.: README, added a new line 'this for my testing line' and saved the file, then I issued the following commands:

git status

# On branch master
# Changed but not updated:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#   modified:   README
#
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")


git add README

git commit -a -m 'To add new line to readme'

I didn't push the code to GitHub. Now I want to cancel this commit.

For this, I used

git reset --hard HEAD~1

But I lost the newly added line 'this for my testing line' from the README file. This should not happen. I need the content to be there. Is there a way to retain the content and cancel my local commit?

Solution 1:

Just use git reset without the --hard flag:

git reset HEAD~1

PS: On Unix based systems you can use HEAD^ which is equal to HEAD~1. On Windows HEAD^ will not work because ^ signals a line continuation. So your command prompt will just ask you More?.

Solution 2:

Use --soft instead of --hard flag:

git reset --soft HEAD^

It will remove the last local (unpushed) commit, but will keep changes you have done.

Solution 3:

If you're in the middle of a commit (i.e. in your editor already), you can cancel it by deleting all lines above the first #. That will abort the commit.

So you can delete all lines so that the commit message is empty, then save the file:

It should look like this.

You'll then get a message that says Aborting commit due to empty commit message..

Solution 4:

The first thing you should do is to determine whether you want to keep the local changes before you delete the commit message.

Use git log to show current commit messages, then find the commit_id before the commit that you want to delete, not the commit you want to delete.

If you want to keep the locally changed files, and just delete commit message:

git reset --soft commit_id

If you want to delete all locally changed files and the commit message:

git reset --hard commit_id

That's the difference of soft and hard

Solution 5:

You can tell Git what to do with your index (set of files that will become the next commit) and working directory when performing git reset by using one of the parameters:

--soft: Only commits will be reseted, while Index and the working directory are not altered.

--mixed: This will reset the index to match the HEAD, while working directory will not be touched. All the changes will stay in the working directory and appear as modified.

--hard: It resets everything (commits, index, working directory) to match the HEAD.

In your case, I would use git reset --soft to keep your modified changes in Index and working directory. Be sure to check this out for a more detailed explanation.