GIT-REVERT

Section: Git Manual (1)
Updated: 09/22/2011

NAME

git-revert - Revert some existing commits

SYNOPSIS

git revert [--edit | --no-edit] [-n] [-m parent-number] [-s] <commit>...

DESCRIPTION

Given one or more existing commits, revert the changes that the related patches introduce, and record some new commits that record them. This requires your working tree to be clean (no modifications from the HEAD commit).

Note: git revert is used to record some new commits to reverse the effect of some earlier commits (often only a faulty one). If you want to throw away all uncommitted changes in your working directory, you should see git-reset(1), particularly the --hard option. If you want to extract specific files as they were in another commit, you should see git-checkout(1), specifically the git checkout <commit> --- <filename> syntax. Take care with these alternatives as both will discard uncommitted changes in your working directory.

OPTIONS

<commit>...

: Commits to revert. For a more complete list of ways to spell commit names, see gitrevisions(1). Sets of commits can also be given but no traversal is done by default, see git-rev-list(1) and its --no-walk option.

-e, --edit

: With this option, git revert will let you edit the commit message prior to committing the revert. This is the default if you run the command from a terminal.

-m parent-number, --mainline parent-number

Usually you cannot revert a merge because you do not know which side of the merge should be considered the mainline. This option specifies the parent number (starting from 1) of the mainline and allows revert to reverse the change relative to the specified parent.

Reverting a merge commit declares that you will never want the tree changes brought in by the merge. As a result, later merges will only bring in tree changes introduced by commits that are not ancestors of the previously reverted merge. This may or may not be what you want.

See the m[blue]revert-a-faulty-merge How-Tom[][1] for more details.

--no-edit

: With this option, git revert will not start the commit message editor.

-n, --no-commit

: Usually the command automatically creates some commits with commit log messages stating which commits were reverted. This flag applies the changes necessary to revert the named commits to your working tree and the index, but does not make the commits. In addition, when this option is used, your index does not have to match the HEAD commit. The revert is done against the beginning state of your index.
This is useful when reverting more than one commits' effect to your index in a row.

-s, --signoff

: Add Signed-off-by line at the end of the commit message.

EXAMPLES

git revert HEAD~3

: Revert the changes specified by the fourth last commit in HEAD and create a new commit with the reverted changes.

git revert -n master5..master2

: Revert the changes done by commits from the fifth last commit in master (included) to the third last commit in master (included), but do not create any commit with the reverted changes. The revert only modifies the working tree and the index.