How to revert git commits

How to revert git commits

Sometimes we are too enthousiast and commit changes into our master tree to realize it was not meant to be? The following is such an example:

$ git log
commit 0f0d1e77417c4fa17c10ea99c688e39a3b4efce7
Author: Gratien D'haese <gratien.dhaese@gmail.com>
Date:   Wed Sep 11 11:31:41 2019 +0200

     revert changes in function is_persistent_ethernet_name

commit 9edc24f56bbb462f4ce67aa06af29a901918d95f
Author: Gratien D'haese <gratien.dhaese@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue Sep 10 09:28:36 2019 +0200

    Cosmetic fix for RHEL 6 and missing name_assign_type for LAN interfaces #2197

commit b0347ff5d50dec02de934754f654ec20990b25a7
Author: Gratien D'haese <gratien.dhaese@gmail.com>
Date:   Wed Sep 11 11:31:41 2019 +0200

     revert changes in function is_persistent_ethernet_name

commit c2418836157e693f0aba8b10c55c8ff48cdebad3
Author: Gratien D'haese <gratien.dhaese@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue Sep 10 09:28:36 2019 +0200

    Cosmetic fix for RHEL 6 and missing name_assign_type for LAN interfaces #2197

commit a252ca20b5dc9f34f6c8fffb61e055141ca37669
Merge: b8b7e46 6915bbd
Author: Gratien D'haese <gratien.dhaese@gmail.com>
Date:   Wed Sep 11 10:20:23 2019 +0200

    Merge pull request #2225 from goldzahn/master
    
    Use mountpoint instead of mount|grep

Well, after some time we realized that we should got back to the commit “a252ca20b5dc9f34f6c8fffb61e055141ca37669” and forget all the more recent commits.

This is how it done quickly and rather easy:

$ git branch temp a252ca20b5dc9f34f6c8fffb61e055141ca37669
$ git rebase --onto temp master 
First, rewinding head to replay your work on top of it...
$ git branch -d temp
Deleted branch temp (was a252ca2).
$ git log
commit a252ca20b5dc9f34f6c8fffb61e055141ca37669
Merge: b8b7e46 6915bbd
Author: Gratien D'haese <gratien.dhaese@gmail.com>
Date:   Wed Sep 11 10:20:23 2019 +0200

We do hope it helps some poor folks struggling with this…