Git soft reset following revert deleted files changes-CodePudding

I wanted to undo a commit, using IntelliJ I right-clicked on the last commit and then clicked "Revert Commit". A message told me no changes were made. By looking at the command log the command was:

revert 75d72c1c0746b225d3857 --no-commit

The reverted changes appear in the changelist (or in the staged files area using sourcetree). I realized it wasn't the correct command to do what I needed, so I used:

reset --soft HEAD^

The last commit was eliminated, but the edited files did not appear in the changelist. It was as if I executed a reset --hard.

I managed to recover changes in another way, but I don't understand why the soft reset acted as a hard reset.

CodePudding user response：

Let's use a modified version of the example that @0x5453 gave in a comment:

git init
echo "hello\n" >> foo
git add foo
git commit -m "add foo"
echo "goodbye\n" >> foo
git commit -am "modify foo"

At this point, the file foo has the following contents:

hello
goodbye

And we have two commits, one for each line in the file.

Now, when you do

git revert --no-commit HEAD

This "undoes" the changes in the most recent commit. This appears as local changes that haven't been committed. If you do git status, you will see that foo is modified. Its contents are now

hello

which is the exact same as the first commit.

So now when you do

git reset --soft HEAD~

You reset back to the first commit. But since the contents of the file are exactly the same as that commit, you will not see any local changes.