How to recover a lost commit using reflog?

The Problem Scenario#

Say there are 3 commits in your repository.

commit 3(third)
commit 2(second)
commit 1(initial)
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and you accidently reset to 2nd commit:

git reset --hard HEAD~1
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Finding the Lost Commit#

you use reflog:

git reflog
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it will show:

abcdef1 HEAD@{0}: reset: moving to HEAD~1
1234567 HEAD@{1}: commit: Add third line
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Here, the second line tells you, HEAD@{1} was pointing to the commit you accidently lost. It’s hash is like 1234567. To recover this, we take following method:

Recovery Options#

Option 1: checkout to the commit and create branch.

git checkout 1234567
git checkout -b branch-with-recovered-third-commit
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Option 2: move current branch to the lost commit:

git reset --hard 1234567
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Summary of Steps#

To summarize the steps:

1. View reflog. git reflog
2. Locate the hash of lost commit(the one before your mistake).
3. Recover the lost commit. git checkout <hash> or git reset --hard <hash>
4. Preserve it. git checkout -b recovered-branch