git-restore

README

CLI tool to restore entire Git repository from a commit hash, branch or tag.

To use the git-restore binary, do:

$ go install github.com/Patel-Raj/git-restore@latest
$ git-restore [/path/to/source/repo] [/path/to/destination/directory] [commit hash/branch/tag]

// Eaxmple
$ git-restore . ./copy 0c7dd4e4b626a23632e7b4a54ccfcb91e5c9960f

To build this binary from source locally, do:

$ git clone git@github.com:Patel-Raj/git-restore.git
$ cd git-restore
$ go build
$ ./git-restore . ./copy 0c7dd4e4b626a23632e7b4a54ccfcb91e5c9960f

How is this tool useful?

Consider the following scenario in your development workflow:

1. You are working on the feature branch.
2. You make a couple of changes and commit them to the feature branch with the commit message commit-message-1.
3. You continue your development and create another commit on the feature branch with the commit message commit-message-2.
4. However, it turns out that you don't need the changes from commit-message-2 and want to remove the entire commit, moving the HEAD back to commit-message-1.
5. You mistakenly execute git reset --hard HEAD~2 instead of git reset --hard HEAD~1. As a result, HEAD moves back by 2 commits, and the changes from commit-message-1 are deleted as well.
6. This is where the git-restore CLI tool can be handy. You can fetch the commit hash of commit-message-1 using git reflog by identifying the commit message, and then use the tool to restore the entire state of the repository to that commit hash.

$ git reflog
9d82c22 (HEAD -> main) HEAD@{0}: reset: moving to HEAD~2
3ca40e5 HEAD@{1}: commit: commit-message-2
7cb88eb HEAD@{2}: commit: commit-message-1

$ git-restore . . 7cb88eb

If you find bugs, improvements or have questions about applyinig this approach, feel free to open a GitHub issue.

Documentation

Overview

Package main is the entry point of the git-restore command line tool. This commands takes in 3 arguments (source repo path, destination directory and commit hash/branch/tag). It restore entire state of the repositroy in the destination directory at which the commit hash/branch/tag is pointing to.