Recover a deleted branch

If you forget to cherry-pick your feature to master, and you delete your branch, then you'll need to locate the commits on the daily branch.

Filter

The easiest way to find your commits is to use the filter option in Git Extension.

filter

  1. Select Author.

  2. Enter your name exactly as it appears in the commit information (name + email).

    First Last <trigram@qlik.com>

    For example:

    Author: First Last <trigram@qlik.com>
Date: 19 hours ago (7/4/2018 4:08:57 PM)
Commit hash: 3d79a92d56a9742d7dcc2963c554000894e401d4

After you add the filter, you only see your own commits.

recover

The branch I want to recover is feature/HLP-3103. I can see which files were changed in each commit by clicking on a commit and looking at the Commit (shows the files) and Diff (shows the changes) tabs.

The commits highlighted in red are the commits that I am interested in.

Create branch

I want to create a branch at the latest relevant commit that was merged into daily.

  1. Right-click the commit.

  2. Select Create new branch.

  3. Name the branch with the correct feature name (example):

    feature/HLP-3103

  4. Select View > Show current branch only.

    only

Note

Now the graph is showing your recovered branch and only your commits.

Note

Remember that a branch is just a reference to a commit. Once I located the last merge commit into daily, I can create a new branch based on that commit. Recovering a commit means adding a reference file to the HEAD of the deleted branch.

Reset files

  1. Clear the author filter.

  2. Find the parent of the first commit you did on this feature branch.

    In the image below, in red are the commits associated with the feature. In green is the parent of the earliest commit on my feature branch. How do I know it is the parent? Locate the earliest commit and trace that branch down.

    parent

    *   Replace hard-coded SW version with variable (earliest commit)
|
|
*   Merge branch 'PortPS2226' into daily (parent)

  3. Right-click the parent commit.

  4. Select Reset current branch to here.

  5. Leave the Mixed option.

The commit button will indicate that you have some files to commit. Click on the commit button to open the dialog. You will see some files in the working area. You will have a clean index (because you selected the mixed reset).

You might see files not part of your feature. This is because other people have committed to daily, and these commits are parents of other commits in the new branch.

asset

  1. Select the files associated with the feature and stage them.

    They should be in the index.

  2. Write a commit message: feature name.

  3. Select Commit.

    recommit

    At the top of the branch we now have a single commit associated with the feature.

    Tip

    You still have to reset the files in the working area. Open the commit window and click Rest all changes.

Cherry-pick to master

  1. Select View > Show all branches.

  2. Checkout master.

  3. Pull master.

  4. Right-click the commit on your feature branch.

  5. Select Cherry-pick.

  6. Resolve conflicts if there are any.

The result

picked

Verify the content before deleting the local branch.