How to "reopen" the last git commit?

Question

I was working on a branch and needed to get back on master for a quick fix so I committed my work in progress.

Now I am back in my branch and I would like to get back to the state where I haven't committed but all my changes are applied and ready to be committed (i.e. cancel the previous commit but my changes are not lost and they are shown in git status).

Amending the previous commit is not good enough for me as I want to see the changed files and lines (it makes it easier to work on my change).

I know git stash would have been a better solution but it's too late. I also tend to mix up (or loose) my stashed commits as they are not linked to a branch.

Answer 1

There are basically two ways to solve this:

1. Do a reset (on the master branch, or whatever branch the false commit is):

   git reset --soft HEAD~1 

   The HEAD~1 is a relative address as explained here.

2. Keep working and perform an amendment:

   git commit --amend 

   In that case you pretend nothing happened, work further on your branch and call the command when you were planning to do a real commit. You kind of overwrite the last commit with all changes and (optionally) a new message.

And pro forma: it is indeed - as you mention yourself - better to perform a git stash, only saying for people that see this answer by accident and think the above is common practice (it is not).