Commit-level revert
Reverting undoes a commit by creating a new commit. This is a safe way to undo changes, as it has no chance of re-writing the commit history. For example, the following command will figure out the changes contained in the 2nd to last commit, create a new commit undoing those changes, and tack the new commit onto the existing project.
git checkout hotfix
git revert HEAD~2This can be visualized as the following:
Contrast this with git reset, which does alter the existing commit history.
For this reason, git revert should be used to undo changes on a public branch,
and git reset should be reserved for undoing changes on a private branch.
You can also think of git revert as a tool for undoing committed changes,
while git reset HEAD is for undoing uncommitted changes.
Like git checkout, git revert has the potential to overwrite files in the
working directory, so it will ask you to commit or stash changes that would be
lost during the revert operation.