Reverting commits (git revert)

git revert <sha> creates a new commit that applies the inverse of a given commit, undoing its changes without erasing history.

Why it matters

When a bad commit is already on a shared branch, you cannot safely reset or rebase it away — others have it. git revert is the safe undo: it moves history forward with a counter-commit, so the remote accepts a normal push and the audit trail shows both the mistake and its reversal. It is the standard “roll back the deploy” move on main.

How it works

Git takes the target commit’s diff, negates it (additions become deletions and vice versa), applies that to HEAD, and commits with a default message Revert "<original subject>". The original commit stays in history.

Action	reset	revert
Rewrites history	yes	no
Safe on shared branch	no	yes
Result	commit disappears	inverse commit added
Leaves audit trail	no	yes

Useful flags: -n to stage the inverse without committing (combine several reverts), and git revert A..B to undo a range. Conflicts pause the operation; resolve, git add, git revert --continue.

Example

$ git log --oneline
9f8e7d6 Add feature flag
3c2b1a0 Break checkout      <-- bad commit
...
$ git revert 3c2b1a0
[main a0b1c2d] Revert "Break checkout"
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

3c2b1a0 remains; a0b1c2d cancels it out. A later git revert a0b1c2d re-applies the change (“revert the revert”).

Pitfalls

• Reverting a merge commit — requires -m 1 to pick the mainline parent; it undoes the merged changes but Git then thinks they’re permanently excluded, so re-merging that branch needs a revert-of-the-revert.
• Revert isn’t reset — people expect the history to shrink; instead it grows by one commit. Use git reset only on private branches.
• Partial-state reverts — if the codebase moved on, the inverse patch may conflict and leave a half-reverted tree until resolved.
• Reverting a range order — A..B reverts oldest-to-newest by default; dependent changes may need --no-commit plus manual ordering.

See also

• resetting-git-reset-soft-mixed-hard
• cherry-picking-git-cherry-pick