Undo a Git merge that hasn't been pushed yet

Question

Within my master branch, I did a git merge some-other-branch locally, but never pushed the changes to origin master. I didn\'t mean to merge, so I\'d like to un

Answer 1

With modern Git, you can:

git merge --abort

Older syntax:

git reset --merge

Old-school:

git reset --hard

But actually, it is worth noticing that git merge --abort is only equivalent to git reset --merge given that MERGE_HEAD is present. This can be read in the Git help for merge command.

git merge --abort is equivalent to git reset --merge when MERGE_HEAD is present.

After a failed merge, when there is no MERGE_HEAD, the failed merge can be undone with git reset --merge, but not necessarily with git merge --abort, so they are not only old and new syntax for the same thing.

Personally I find git reset --merge much more powerful and useful in everyday work, so that's the one I always use.