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

Strategy: Create a new branch from where everything was good.

Rationale: Reverting a merge is hard. There are too many solutions, depending on many factors such as whether you've committed or pushed your merge or if there were new commits since your merge. Also you still need to have a relatively deep understanding of git to adapt these solutions to your case. If you blindly follow some instructions, you can end up with an "empty merge" where nothing will be merged, and further merge attempts will make Git tell you "Already up to date".

Solution:

Let's say you want to merge dev into feature-1.

1. Find the revision that you want to receive the merge:

   git log --oneline feature-1
   a1b2c3d4 Merge branch 'dev' into 'feature-1' <-- the merge you want to undo
   e5f6g7h8 Fix NPE in the Zero Point Module <-- the one before the merge, you probably want this one
   

2. Check it out (go back in time):

   git checkout e5f6g7h8
   

3. Create a new branch from there and check it out:

   git checkout -b feature-1
   

Now you can restart your merge:

1. Merge: git merge dev

2. Fix your merge conflicts.

3. Commit: git commit

4. When you're satisfied with the results, delete the old branch: git branch --delete feature-1