git-commit-vandalism/Documentation/git-revert.txt
Junio C Hamano 43966ab315 revert: optionally refer to commit in the "reference" format
A typical "git revert" commit uses the full title of the original
commit in its title, and starts its body of the message with:

    This reverts commit 8fa7f667cf61386257c00d6e954855cc3215ae91.

This does not encourage the best practice of describing not just
"what" (i.e. "Revert X" on the title says what we did) but "why"
(i.e. and it does not say why X was undesirable).

We can instead phrase this first line of the body to be more like

    This reverts commit 8fa7f667 (do this and that, 2022-04-25)

so that the title does not have to be

    Revert "do this and that"

We can instead use the title to describe "why" we are reverting the
original commit.

Introduce the "--reference" option to "git revert", and also the
revert.reference configuration variable, which defaults to false, to
tweak the title and the first line of the draft commit message for
when creating a "revert" commit.

When this option is in use, the first line of the pre-filled editor
buffer becomes a comment line that tells the user to say _why_.  If
the user exits the editor without touching this line by mistake,
what we prepare to become the first line of the body, i.e. "This
reverts commit 8fa7f667 (do this and that, 2022-04-25)", ends up to
be the title of the resulting commit.  This behaviour is designed to
help such a user to identify such a revert in "git log --oneline"
easily so that it can be further reworded with "git rebase -i" later.

Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
2022-05-26 23:05:03 -07:00

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git-revert(1)
=============
NAME
----
git-revert - Revert some existing commits
SYNOPSIS
--------
[verse]
'git revert' [--[no-]edit] [-n] [-m parent-number] [-s] [-S[<keyid>]] <commit>...
'git revert' (--continue | --skip | --abort | --quit)
DESCRIPTION
-----------
Given one or more existing commits, revert the changes that the
related patches introduce, and record some new commits that record
them. This requires your working tree to be clean (no modifications
from the HEAD commit).
Note: 'git revert' is used to record some new commits to reverse the
effect of some earlier commits (often only a faulty one). If you want to
throw away all uncommitted changes in your working directory, you
should see linkgit:git-reset[1], particularly the `--hard` option. If
you want to extract specific files as they were in another commit, you
should see linkgit:git-restore[1], specifically the `--source`
option. Take care with these alternatives as
both will discard uncommitted changes in your working directory.
See "Reset, restore and revert" in linkgit:git[1] for the differences
between the three commands.
OPTIONS
-------
<commit>...::
Commits to revert.
For a more complete list of ways to spell commit names, see
linkgit:gitrevisions[7].
Sets of commits can also be given but no traversal is done by
default, see linkgit:git-rev-list[1] and its `--no-walk`
option.
-e::
--edit::
With this option, 'git revert' will let you edit the commit
message prior to committing the revert. This is the default if
you run the command from a terminal.
-m parent-number::
--mainline parent-number::
Usually you cannot revert a merge because you do not know which
side of the merge should be considered the mainline. This
option specifies the parent number (starting from 1) of
the mainline and allows revert to reverse the change
relative to the specified parent.
+
Reverting a merge commit declares that you will never want the tree changes
brought in by the merge. As a result, later merges will only bring in tree
changes introduced by commits that are not ancestors of the previously
reverted merge. This may or may not be what you want.
+
See the link:howto/revert-a-faulty-merge.html[revert-a-faulty-merge How-To] for
more details.
--no-edit::
With this option, 'git revert' will not start the commit
message editor.
--cleanup=<mode>::
This option determines how the commit message will be cleaned up before
being passed on to the commit machinery. See linkgit:git-commit[1] for more
details. In particular, if the '<mode>' is given a value of `scissors`,
scissors will be appended to `MERGE_MSG` before being passed on in the case
of a conflict.
-n::
--no-commit::
Usually the command automatically creates some commits with
commit log messages stating which commits were
reverted. This flag applies the changes necessary
to revert the named commits to your working tree
and the index, but does not make the commits. In addition,
when this option is used, your index does not have to match
the HEAD commit. The revert is done against the
beginning state of your index.
+
This is useful when reverting more than one commits'
effect to your index in a row.
-S[<keyid>]::
--gpg-sign[=<keyid>]::
--no-gpg-sign::
GPG-sign commits. The `keyid` argument is optional and
defaults to the committer identity; if specified, it must be
stuck to the option without a space. `--no-gpg-sign` is useful to
countermand both `commit.gpgSign` configuration variable, and
earlier `--gpg-sign`.
-s::
--signoff::
Add a `Signed-off-by` trailer at the end of the commit message.
See the signoff option in linkgit:git-commit[1] for more information.
--strategy=<strategy>::
Use the given merge strategy. Should only be used once.
See the MERGE STRATEGIES section in linkgit:git-merge[1]
for details.
-X<option>::
--strategy-option=<option>::
Pass the merge strategy-specific option through to the
merge strategy. See linkgit:git-merge[1] for details.
--rerere-autoupdate::
--no-rerere-autoupdate::
Allow the rerere mechanism to update the index with the
result of auto-conflict resolution if possible.
--reference::
Instead of starting the body of the log message with "This
reverts <full object name of the commit being reverted>.",
refer to the commit using "--pretty=reference" format
(cf. linkgit:git-log[1]). The `revert.reference`
configuration variable can be used to enable this option by
default.
SEQUENCER SUBCOMMANDS
---------------------
include::sequencer.txt[]
EXAMPLES
--------
`git revert HEAD~3`::
Revert the changes specified by the fourth last commit in HEAD
and create a new commit with the reverted changes.
`git revert -n master~5..master~2`::
Revert the changes done by commits from the fifth last commit
in master (included) to the third last commit in master
(included), but do not create any commit with the reverted
changes. The revert only modifies the working tree and the
index.
SEE ALSO
--------
linkgit:git-cherry-pick[1]
GIT
---
Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite