How to recover commit from 'detached head state'?

Question

I checked out another branch with updates then made a few changes, switched back to the main git and now the changes disappeared! Can I get them back? the terminal was basically

Answer 1

I had a similar problem. I found git reflog to be a life-saver. In case it helps illustrate it use, here's the output:

e3191c5 HEAD@{0}: checkout: moving from ec31ccf0735240d0cdc5a44fd443039c3caa43f0 to master
ec31ccf HEAD@{1}: commit: Added code and data for simulation.
781b9ee HEAD@{2}: checkout: moving from 3bd804e635b913840c71b7f8a33665460580d45f to 781b
3bd804e HEAD@{3}: checkout: moving from master to 3bd804

My situation was a bit different in that I had made a commit while in a detached HEAD state starting from a very old commit.

If I simply wanted to merge ec31ccf0735240d0cdc5a44fd443039c3caa43f0 (aka ec31ccf, which is where I had been) into master, I think git merge ec31ccf or git rebase ec31ccf might have worked. But this would be mostly merging ancient history in my case (with merge conflicts, etc.).

Instead, I just wanted to recover what I'd done on ec31ccf, and git cherry-pick ec31ccf worked nicely.