Can I revert changes made in old commit?

[Anton Pavelyev]

Hello!

Imagine I do a little commit "B" few days ago. In that commit was file "labels.cfg".
There was many other commits since commit "B". e.g now I am at commit "F".
I want revert changes I made in "labels.cfg" in commit "B". I have another changes beetwen "B" and "F" commits in "labels.cfg" and I want to save them.

How can I do it?

[TimP · Accepted solution]

Hi Anton,

You can! The command you want is git revert. If the commit id for commit "B" is abad1, you can simply run:

git revert abad1

To create a new commit that reverts the changes introduced to label.cfg in abad1. 

Edit:

If you don't want to commit the revert straight away you can pass the -n flag to apply the reverse patch to your working copy:

git revert -n abad1

cheers,

Tim

[Anton Pavelyev]

Thank you Tim! You advice helped me. But can git revert exact file/files and do it without "right away" commit? I heard git always work with full commit, so it's ideology is many small commits. Right?)

[TimP]

I'm not sure of an easy way to back out changes for just a single file - but you can prevent the commit from being created immediately by passing git revert the -n flag. I've updated my answer above.