Git commit lost after reset --hard. Not found by fsck, not in reflog

Question

I wanted to clear my working directory of some uncommitted files, but accidentally ran git reset --hard.

I realized that I had lost the previous (un-pushed) commit, so I ran git reset --hard ORIG_HEAD. This did not get me to my lost commit.

I ran git reflog, but the commit was not listed there. I also ran git fsck --lost-found, but there were no commits in the list, only a few unrelated blobs and trees.

Since I can't find any reference of the lost commit (apart from the .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG which still has the relevant commit message and list of changes), I'm not sure how to go about recovering the commit.

Is there any way to get the lost commit back, or should I get ready for an all-nighter?

Answer 1

Not sure why you are unable to find your commit, as @twalberg's comment about git reset --hard is correct. Here are some things to try, though.

You have the message for the commit you're looking for (.git/COMMIT_EDITMSG). If COMMIT_EDITMSG was written, then that particular commit should be somewhere. Pick out some text from the message that is fairly unique and try this:

git log -g --grep="<something specific from your commit message>"

It will go through the reflog and find commits that match text from your lost commit's message.

If no luck with that, you can try looking through all commits on every branch:

git log --all --grep="<something specific from your commit message>"

Once you find the commit hash, you can check it out, make a new branch, merge it back into your current branch, etc.

However, if that all fails you can try looking though objects that are in the repository, but aren't part of any commit (e.g., added to the index, but not committed.) This answer can help you with that:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/7376959/845716