Home / server / Questions / 56722
In Process
interstar
Asked: 2009-08-21 08:34:28 +0800 CST

Git : seemed to be in "(no branch)" and then lost my changes

  • 772

I was trying to push from my Git workspace up to Github but my added and committed changes didn't seem to get uploaded.

Then, doing a "git branch" I got something that looked like this :

git branch
* (no branch)
  master

Foolishly, I thought I could get back into master with 

git checkout master

and now my changes seem to have gone. My master branch is about a day old. And there seems no way to switch back to this (no branch).

Are my changes lost? Or is there a way to recover them?

git

3 Answers

  1. As long as you've not done a git gc, then you've not lost anything. All you need to do is find it again :) What do you get with:

    git reflog show

    That should show you what happened, and the id of the missing node(s).

    • 14

  2. The above answer is correct. This is what I did:

    $ git reflog
5b35f6d HEAD@{1}: pull github master: Fast forward
ca92d15 HEAD@{2}: checkout: moving from 759dab1b15731ce7680c26839ca470d20e709e36 to master
759dab1 HEAD@{3}: commit (merge): Merge branch 'master' of github.com:gonzojive/IODB-ui into HEAD
065e269 HEAD@{4}: commit: added fieldsets to snazzy form
f357606 HEAD@{5}: commit: preliminary support for google maps.
ca92d15 HEAD@{6}: checkout: moving from master to ca92d15d272867b63d54f96d4aa57f8ecc479cd0

$ git checkout ca92d15d272867b63d54f96d4aa57f8ecc479cd0

    The "Oh No!" moment is this:

    checkout: moving from master to ca92d15d272867b63d54f96d4aa57f8ecc479cd0

    ca92d15d272867b63d54f96d4aa57f8ecc479cd0 is the anonymous branch that shows up as (no branch). To get back to it, just do a git checkout and your old pseudobranch is restored.

    I recommend backing up your git repository before you accidentally gc it, just for peace of mind.

    • 6 
  3. # if you have already checked out to master, 
# you won't know the commit-ish of your "no branch":

git fsck --lost-found # (to find your <commit-ish>)
git merge <commit-ish>

# if you are still on your "no branch" commit:

git log # (the commit-ish will be on the first line)
git checkout master
git merge <commit-ish>

# or

git log | head -n 1 | cut -d ' ' -f 2 | pbcopy
git checkout master
git merge <commit-ish>
    • 2