How do I move forward and backward between commits in git?
GitGit Problem Overview
I am doing a git bisect
and after arriving to the problematic commit, I am now trying to get a step forward/backward to make sure I am in the right one.
I know of HEAD^
to go backwards in history but is there another shortcut to get me forward (towards a specific commit in the future) like so:
A - B - C(HEAD) - D - E - F
I know that my target is F and I want to move from C to D.
NOTE: this is not a duplicate of https://stackoverflow.com/q/2121230/146272, my question is slightly different and is not answered there
Git Solutions
Solution 1 - Git
I believe you can do:
git reset HEAD@{1}
To go one commit forward in time. To go forward multiple commits, use HEAD@{2}, HEAD@{3}, etc.
Solution 2 - Git
I've experimented a bit and this seems to do the trick to navigate forwards (edit: it works well only when you have a linear history without merge commits):
git checkout $(git rev-list --topo-order HEAD..towards | tail -1)
where towards
is a SHA1 of the commit or a tag.
Explanation:
- the command inside
$()
means: get all the commits between currentHEAD
andtowards
commit (excludingHEAD
), and sort them in the precedence order (like ingit log
by default -- instead of the chronological order which is weirdly the default forrev-list
), and then take the last one (tail
), i.e. the one we want to go to. - this is evaluated in the subshell, and passed to
git checkout
to perform a checkout.
You can define a function accessible as a parameter-expecting alias in your .profile
file to navigate forward towards the particular commit:
# Go forward in Git commit hierarchy, towards particular commit
# Usage:
# gofwd v1.2.7
# Does nothing when the parameter is not specified.
gofwd() {
git checkout $(git rev-list --topo-order HEAD.."$*" | tail -1)
}
# Go back in Git commit hierarchy
# Usage:
# goback
alias goback='git checkout HEAD~'
Solution 3 - Git
All you need to get clear, not detached head state is to reset, not checkout.
git reset HEAD@{1}
Solution 4 - Git
This is what I'm using to navigate back and forth.
moving to next commit
function n() {
git log --reverse --pretty=%H master | grep -A 1 $(git rev-parse HEAD) | tail -n1 | xargs git checkout
}
moving to previous commit
function p() {
git checkout HEAD^1
}
Solution 5 - Git
Say F is the latest commit on trunk
(insert your own branch name here) ... you can refer to it as trunk~0
(or just trunk
), E as trunk~1
, D as trunk~2
etc.
Take a look in your reflog for yet more ways to name commits.
Solution 6 - Git
Traversing backward is trivial since you are moving down the tree, and there's always one way to go
function git_down
git checkout HEAD^
end
When traversing forward you are moving up the tree, so you need to be explicit which branch you are targeting:
function git_up
git log --reverse --pretty=%H $argv | grep -A 1 (git rev-parse HEAD) | tail -n1 | xargs git checkout
end
Usage: git down
, git up <branch-name>
Solution 7 - Git
If you want to see ahead, you can do this trick, as Git doesn't have strict command for it.
git log --reverse COMMIT_HASH..
Example
List of log history hashes:
A
B
C -> put this
D
using command git log --reverse C..
, in output you will see B and A.
Solution 8 - Git
I just did a test on this. say for example you are in master branch Then do:
git checkout HEAD@{3}
So head gets detached, and you can then try it again to go to any other commit:
git checkout HEAD@{4}
Once you are done looking around, you can go back to your original state just by checking out to that branch. In my example: master branch
git checkout master
If you don't want to go to original state, and want so keep one of the commits as your head and continue from there, then you need to branch out from there. for example after "git checkout HEAD@{4}" , you can issue
git checkout -b MyNewBranch
Solution 9 - Git
Probably not the nicest way but you can use git log
to view the list of commits and then use git checkout [sha1 of D]
to move to D.
Solution 10 - Git
As a workaround, you can just return to HEAD with
git checkout <branch>
And then move to the commit you'd like to, with
git checkout HEAD~<offset>
Solution 11 - Git
If you are using vs code then Git history is an awesome plugin where you can efficiently see commits and check their contents in the editor itself. check out the link
Solution 12 - Git
branchName=master; commitInOrder=1; git checkout $(git log --pretty=%H "${branchName}" | tac | head -n "${commitInOrder}" | tail -n 1)
where:
branchName
equals branch name
commitInOrder
equals a commit in order from very first commit in the selected branch (so 1 is the very first commit, 2 is second commit in branch, etc.)
Solution 13 - Git
Solution 14 - Git
I would use git-reflog
and git-reset
.
It is not the same case as you run git-bisect
, but suppose you git-reset
to commit C and want to move it back to commit F.
At the point, git-reflog
looks like this:
$ git reflog show
4444444 (HEAD -> main) HEAD@{0}: reset: moving to 4444444
1111111 HEAD@{1}: commit: F
2222222 HEAD@{2}: commit: E
3333333 HEAD@{3}: commit: D
4444444 (HEAD -> main) HEAD@{4}: commit: C
5555555 HEAD@{5}: commit: B
6666666 HEAD@{6}: commit: A
Then, you can run git-reset
to go back to any commit by specifying SHA1 hash or offset number from HEAD.
In your case, run git-reset
as follows:
$ git reset 1111111
or
$ git reset HEAD@{1}