Reverting to a previous commit in Git for visual studio 2012

Question

I am really new to git and source control.

I am using visual studio tools for git with vs2012.

I am on some commit and want to go back to some previous commit but i cannot seem to do it how. When i go to the commit details the revert button seems to have been grayed out.

I have stuck on this problem for the last 2 hours. I have researched the internet but to no use. Please can somebody tell me how to revert to a previous commit.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 adds support for GIT "Reset", which is what you probably want to do:

• open history
• right click the commit you want to revert to
• reset -> reset and delete changes

Answer 2

You don't want to do a revert - revert just takes a commit and undoes it.

If you want to go back to a previous commit - there are two options:

If you want to permanently go back, do a git hard reset, which rolls back the code to a specified commit. You can do this via:

git reset --hard {commit number} 

If you want to temporarily go back, you can create a branch from that commit. which will essentially keep you current path in the code history, and create another path from the point in history where that code was committed.