Lesson 08

Revert vs reset

Use revert for shared history and reserve reset for local cleanup before commits leave your machine.

Good Code

undo-shared-change.sh

# Revert preserves shared history while undoing behavior.
git fetch origin
git switch main
git pull --ff-only
git revert 4f3a2b1
git push

undo-shared-change.sh

# Resetting shared main rewrites history for everyone else.
git switch main
git reset --hard HEAD~1
git push --force

The good version creates a new commit that undoes a shared change, preserving history that teammates may already have.

The bad version rewrites shared history on main, forcing everyone else to reconcile their local repositories.

History commands should match whether the commits are already shared with other people.