Resetting, checking out & reverting

https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/resetting-checking-out-and-reverting

Command	Scope	Common use cases
git reset	Commit-level	Discard commits in a private branch or throw away uncommitted changes
git reset	File-level	Unstage a file
git checkout	Commit-level	Switch between branches or inspect old snapshots
git checkout	File-level	Discard changes in the working directory
git revert	Commit-level	Undo commits in a public branch by making a new commit
git revert	File-level	(N/A)

Good Practice

1. Prefer git reset when you wish to do some commit level changes, avoid it for file level. Learn the options --mixed(default), --soft and --hard.

2. git reset can be history altering. In such cases,

   1. use git reflog to fix your mess up.
   2. use git reset -p to interactively change the history

3. Prefer git switch over git checkout for switching between branches or creating new branches

4. Using git reset or git checkout on a file level might be confusing as we need to know what they do by default. Instead use git restore, specifying the --source=<treeish> and whether to do changes in --worktree (default) or --staged

   |Command|Equivalent|
   |---|---|
   |git reset HEAD~2 ./readme|git restore --staged --source=HEAD~2 ./readme|
   |git checkout HEAD~2 ./readme|git restore [--worktree] --source=HEAD~2 ./readme|

   Also use patch mode -p to make changes interactively

5. But remember both switch and restore commands are experimental as of git 2.43.1