How to undo "git commit --amend" done instead of "git commit"

Question

I accidentally amended my previous commit. The commit should have been separate to keep history of the changes I made to a particular file.

Is there a way to undo that last commit? If I do something like git reset --hard HEAD^, the first commit also is undone.

(I have not yet pushed to any remote directories)

Answer 1

What you need to do is to create a new commit with the same details as the current HEAD commit, but with the parent as the previous version of HEAD. git reset --soft will move the branch pointer so that the next commit happens on top of a different commit from where the current branch head is now.

# Move the current head so that it's pointing at the old commit # Leave the index intact for redoing the commit. # HEAD@{1} gives you "the commit that HEAD pointed at before  # it was moved to where it currently points at". Note that this is # different from HEAD~1, which gives you "the commit that is the # parent node of the commit that HEAD is currently pointing to." git reset --soft HEAD@{1}  # commit the current tree using the commit details of the previous # HEAD commit. (Note that HEAD@{1} is pointing somewhere different from the # previous command. It's now pointing at the erroneously amended commit.) git commit -C HEAD@{1} 

Answer 2

use the ref-log:

git branch fixing-things HEAD@{1} git reset fixing-things 

you should then have all your previously amended changes only in your working copy and can commit again

to see a full list of previous indices type git reflog