Scenario:
I am on a feature/branch, modified several files and also added a new temporary.file. Unintentionally I commit and push all the changed files and also the new temporary one.
How to “uncommit” the temporary file?
What I did is
git rebase -i main
# change last commit to “edit”
# removed the temporary file
git add .
git rebase --continue
git push -f
What is a better way to do it? I lost the temporary file now, because I had to remove it. I suppose there should be a better way to handle such case.
CodePudding user response：
There are a few ways to "uncommit" a file in Git, and the best approach will depend on the specific situation.
One option is to use the git reset command to undo the commit and move the temporary file back to the working directory. This can be done with the command git reset HEAD~. This will undo the last commit, leaving the temporary file in the working directory. You can then remove the temporary file and create a new commit without it.
Another option is to use the git revert command to undo the commit but keep the temporary file in the repository. This can be done with the command git revert HEAD, which creates a new commit that undoes the changes made in the previous commit. The temporary file will still be in the repository, but it will be in a previous commit and won't be present in the current branch.
It would be best to use the first approach if the temporary file is not needed; otherwise, if the file contains important data, you can use the second approach.
CodePudding user response：
Here are a couple of ways to approach this:
Simply remove the temporary file and commit and push a change that removes it.
This leaves the mistake visible in the branch history, but that most likely doesn't have a material affect the project.
Amend and push the commit in which you accidentally added the temporary file. Then reapply any later commits.
The problem with is that when you amend a commit that you have published by pushing, you are potentially going to mess up things for other people who have pulled the changes. This may or may not matter.
Note if the temp file contains secret information that is harmful to release, you will take more extreme steps to expunge it. Neither of the above will expunge the secrets from the repository that you pushed it.
CodePudding user response：
git rm --cached <file> removes the file from the index but not from the working tree. After that simply git rebase --continue.