How to get back to the latest commit after checking out a previous commit?
If you know the commit you want to return to is the head of some branch, or is tagged, then you can just
git checkout branchname
You can also use git reflog to see what other commits your HEAD (or any other ref) has pointed to in the past.
Edited to add:
In newer versions of Git, if you only ran git checkout or something else to move your HEAD once, you can also do
git checkout -
to switch back to wherever it was before the last checkout. This was motivated by the analogy to the shell idiom cd - to go back to whatever working directory one was previously in.
Have a look at the graphical GUI ... gitk it shows all commits. Sometimes it is easier to work graphical ... ^^
git checkout master
master is the tip, or the last commit. gitk will only show you up to where you are in the tree at the time. git reflog will show all the commits, but in this case, you just want the tip, so git checkout master.
Came across this question just now and have something to add
To go to the most recent commit:
git checkout $(git log --branches -1 --pretty=format:"%H")
Explanation:
git log --branches shows log of commits from all local branches-1 limit to one commit → most recent commit--pretty=format:"%H" format to only show commit hashgit checkout $(...) use output of subshell as argument for checkout
Note:
This will result in a detached head though (because we checkout directly to the commit). This can be avoided by extracting the branch name using sed, explained below.
To go to the branch of the most recent commit:
git checkout $(git log --branches -1 --pretty=format:'%D' | sed 's/.*, //g')
Explanation:
git log --branches shows log of commits from all local branches-1 limit to one commit → most recent commit--pretty=format:"%D" format to only show ref names| sed 's/.*, //g' ignore all but the last of multiple refs (*)git checkout $(...) use output of subshell as argument for checkout
*) HEAD and remote branches are listed first, local branches are listed last in alphabetically descending order, so the one remaining will be the alphabetically first branch name
Note:
This will always only use the (alphabetically) first branch name if there are multiple for that commit.
Anyway, I think the best solution would just be to display the ref names for the most recent commit to know where to checkout to:
git log --branches -1 --pretty=format:'%D'
E.g. create the alias git top for that command.