Practical uses of git reset --soft?

Question

I have been working with git for just over a month. Indeed I have used reset for the first time only yesterday, but the soft reset still doesn\'t make much sense to me.

Answer 1

While I really like the answers in this thread, I use git reset --soft for a slightly different, but a very practical scenario nevertheless.

I use an IDE for development which has a good diff tool for showing changes (staged and unstaged) after my last commit. Now, most of my tasks involve multiple commits. For example, let's say I make 5 commits to complete a particular task. I use the diff tool in the IDE during every incremental commit from 1-5 to look at my changes from the last commit. I find it a very helpful way to review my changes before committing.

But at the end of my task, when I want to see all my changes together (from before 1st commit), to do a self code-review before making a pull request, I would only see the changes from my previous commit (after commit 4) and not changes from all the commits of my current task.

So I use git reset --soft HEAD~4 to go back 4 commits. This lets me see all the changes together. When I am confident of my changes, I can then do git reset HEAD@{1} and push it to remote confidently.

Answer 2

Another use case is when you want to replace the other branch with yours in a pull request, for example, lets say that you have a software with features A, B, C in develop.

You are developing with the next version and you:

• Removed feature B

• Added feature D

In the process, develop just added hotfixes for feature B.

You can merge develop into next, but that can be messy sometimes, but you can also use git reset --soft origin/develop and create a commit with your changes and the branch is mergeable without conflicts and keep your changes.

It turns out that git reset --soft is a handy command. I personally use it a lot to squash commits that dont have "completed work" like "WIP" so when I open the pull request, all my commits are understandable.

Answer 3

I use it to amend more than just the last commit.

Let's say I made a mistake in commit A and then made commit B. Now I can only amend B. So I do git reset --soft HEAD^^, I correct and re-commit A and then re-commit B.

Of course, it's not very convenient for large commits… but you shouldn't do large commits anyway ;-)

Answer 4

Use Case - Combine a series of local commits

"Oops. Those three commits could be just one."

So, undo the last 3 (or whatever) commits (without affecting the index nor working directory). Then commit all the changes as one.

E.g.

> git add -A; git commit -m "Start here."
> git add -A; git commit -m "One"
> git add -A; git commit -m "Two"
> git add -A' git commit -m "Three"
> git log --oneline --graph -4 --decorate

> * da883dc (HEAD, master) Three
> * 92d3eb7 Two
> * c6e82d3 One
> * e1e8042 Start here.

> git reset --soft HEAD~3
> git log --oneline --graph -1 --decorate

> * e1e8042 Start here.

Now all your changes are preserved and ready to be committed as one.

Short answers to your questions

Are these two commands really the same (reset --soft vs commit --amend)?

• No.

Any reason to use one or the other in practical terms?

• commit --amend to add/rm files from the very last commit or to change its message.
• reset --soft <commit> to combine several sequential commits into a new one.

And more importantly, are there any other uses for reset --soft apart from amending a commit?

• See other answers :)

Answer 5

One practical use is if you have committed to your local repo already (ie. git commit -m ) then you can reverse that last commit by doing git reset --soft HEAD~1

Also for your knowledge, if you have staged your changes already (ie with git add .) then you can reverse the staging by doing git reset --mixed HEAD or i've commonly also just used git reset

lastly, git reset --hard wipes everything out including your local changes. The ~ after head tells you how many commits to go to from the top.