Reset Git to commit without changing HEAD to detached state

Question

I'd like to restore the files of the git working copy to a given commit, without setting that commit as the HEAD commit.

If I git checkout to a given commit I obtain a detached HEAD, and after commiting changes, the commit tree would look something like:

A | B | C   | \ D  E 

While the behaviour I'd like to obtain is:

A | B | C | D | <- git command so my files are restored to C, but my HEAD still points to D E 

Thanks

Answer 1

This should do it:

git reset --hard C git reset --soft D 

First you reset the HEAD, index and worktree to C.
Then you reset HEAD (and only HEAD, as explained in "Practical uses of git reset --soft?") to D.

Note that a commit at this point would create a new commit with C content, replacing D by a D' looking like C.
That changes the history, and is not much different than a simple git reset --hard C.

Another option would git revert C on top of D, but D would still be visible in the history, which might be what you don't want.

Answer 2

VonC answer requires you to do a roundtrip. You can achieve the same thing with a single 'git checkout'

git checkout C ./

Note that you have to provide ./ otherwise git will actually check out the specified branch or commit.