Recover Lost Commits History

[kluivstar]

Body

Hello, good day.
Any idea on how to recover lost commit history, it all started when i mistakenly made a commit without --all first.
Went on stack overflow and everything got messed up even more my repo show just one commit.
PS on my profile i can still see a little history of that specific repo but inside the repo itself all commits are lost.
Help.
Thanks.

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[ebndev]

Hi @devdenzel, thanks for posting in GitHub Discussions!

I've gone ahead and moved this post to our Profile category, as this topic may be more relevant there and might help someone give you a nudge in the right direction. 😁

In the meantime, please feel encouraged to explore existing discussions in the category and utilize the search in case other users may have run into the same issue!

[mateusbellei]

Hi @devdenzel, try this:

1. Check for Refs in the Git Log: Sometimes, Git keeps references to lost commits even if they don’t show up in the normal history. You can try using the following command to find those:

git reflog

2. Find and Reset to the Lost Commit: Once you’ve identified the lost commit from the reflog, you can reset your branch back to that commit.

git reset --hard <commit_hash>

3. Go to correct branch

git checkout <branch_name>

4. Stash Any Uncommitted Work: If you have uncommitted changes, you can stash them before performing the reset:

git stash

4.1. After recovering the commit history, you can reapply the stash with:

git stash pop

5. Check the Remote Repo: If the problem persists and your history is still available on a remote repository, you can try fetching or resetting from the remote.

First, check the remote state:
git fetch origin

Second, compare the state of the remote:
git log origin/main

If the history is intact there, you can reset your local branch to match the remote:
git reset --hard origin/main

6. Last Resort - Contact GitHub Support: Since your GitHub profile still shows part of the history, you can contact GitHub Support for help with restoring commits that might still exist in the repository metadata.

[kluivstar]

Hello, i tried using reflog, didn't work.

I somehow implemented a solution i found on Stack overflow, that solution made the whole thing worse, lol.
Maybe i didn't use reflog correctly the first time. Will try again and give a feedback.