How to "git reset --soft HEAD^" a single file?

Question

When I am splitting a commit during interactive rebase, I often would like to extract specific files from the last commit.

My current process is to

Copy the last commit message to my clipboard,
git reset --soft HEAD^ (last commit is undone, changes are staged)
Unstage files I wanted extract
Re-commit (pasting in the copied commit message)
Add/commit the remaining files
Continue with rebase

I feel like this would be simpler if I could soft reset a specific file.

Amin Shojaei · Accepted Answer · 2022-09-08 13:25:47Z

15

Are you trying to do git checkout $COMMIT_HASH some_file.ext?

You can use this to revert a file to its previous state, and git stages this change.

edited Sep 8, 2022 at 13:25

Amin Shojaei

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answered Jan 30, 2014 at 23:36

mellowfish

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3 Comments

Rhinon Over a year ago

This in combination with git commit --amend would get me halfway there, except the change itself is lost. In short, I want to split changes out of the previous commit without having to reset the whole commit.

mellowfish Over a year ago

No, checking out a single file does not wipe out your other changes. It just reverts that one file.

kostix Over a year ago

The only apparent problem (?) is that git checkout touches the work tree while git reset $commit -- $path does not.

Emil Davtyan · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-31 00:19:23Z

It seems this does what you want :

git reset [-q] [commit] [--] paths… This form resets the index entries for all paths to their state at commit. (It does not affect the working tree, nor the current branch.)

This means that git reset is the opposite of git add .

One should add that this (git reset -- path) step is to be done after the git reset --soft HEAD^. The idea here is to step HEAD back one commit without changing anything in the index or work-tree, then to make one change to the index (but not the work tree) using the new, stepped-back HEAD.

hojin · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-21 03:39:14Z

I am not sure it's an optimal solution.

git reset HEAD~ git add . git commit (optional) git reset --hard HEAD

Siddharth Pandey · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-16 08:30:07Z

An easy way could be

Add all files

git add .
Now reset the files you do not want to commit

git reset 'file1.ext' git reset 'file2.ext' ... so on
Continue your commit and push

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