4. Resetting unwanted changes

Amending the last commit

We have yet to add the <h1> tags to the hello.html file. The result should look like this:

File: hello.html

<h1>Hello, World!</h1>

Task

Wrap the content of hello.html with <h1> tags, stage, and commit the changes.

Tip: If you forgot the necessary commands, check the git add and git commit commands in Gitopedia.

Oh, sorry, didn't I say that the last commit message should say exactly Added HTML tags to hello.html?

Darn!

Silly as it may sound, mistakes in commit messages are quite common: typos, missing ticket IDs, etc. But don't worry, we can fix it easily.

Let's fix it

All you need to do is run the git commit command again, but with the --amend option. This option tells git to replace the last commit with the new one.

Run in Terminal:

git commit --amend -m "Added HTML tags to hello.html"

As usual, the -m option allows you to specify the new commit message directly from the command line. If you omit it, the default text editor will open with the last commit message.

If you ran the commit command without the -m option, you may have noticed that your terminal changed: the history is gone and you are presented with a blank screen. This is a text editor that Git has opened for you to write the commit message. You can write the message in this editor, save it, and close it to complete the commit. The editor is usually a command line text editor like vim or nano.

Sounds easy, but what could go wrong? People not familiar with these editors may find it difficult to even exit them. If you're one of them, here are some videos that will help you exit these editors: Vim, Nano. If nothing helps, kill the terminal with the little icon on the right side of the terminal and start over.

Task

Amend the last commit message using the command above.

This is great, but what if we missed adding other important bits to the last commit? For example, let's surround our text with proper html and body tags like this:

File: hello.html

<html>
    <body>
        <h1>Hello, World!</h1>
    </body>
</html>

To add missing changes to the last commit, first we need to stage them using the git add command. Then we can use the --amend option to add them to the last commit.

Task

Edit the hello.html file to include the missing tags and stage the changes. Don't commit just yet!

At this point, we can simply run git commit -m "Another commit" to commit the changes as a new commit. But if we want to add them to the last commit, we can use the --amend option again.

Run in Terminal:

git commit --amend -m "Added H1, HTML, and BODY tags to hello.html"

Task

Amend the last commit using the command above.

Perfect! Now we have all the changes we wanted within a single commit. This may be helpful in the future when somebody wants to figure out who made a particular change and why.

Next step

Course preview Gitopedia

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