Can I recover a branch after its deletion in Git?

Question

If I run git branch -d XYZ, is there a way to recover the branch? Is there a way to go back as if I didn\'t run the delete branch command?

Answer 1

Make sure to perform all of this locally, and confirm your repo is in the state you desire before pushing to Bitbucket Cloud. It may also be a good idea to clone your current repo, and test these solutions out first.

1. If you just deleted the branch, you'll see something like this in your terminal:

    Deleted branch  (was )

2.To restore the branch, use:

    git checkout -b  

If you don't know the 'sha' off the top of your head, you can:

1. Find the 'sha' for the commit at the tip of your deleted branch using:

    git reflog

2. To restore the branch, use:

    git checkout -b  

If your commits are not in your reflog:

1. You can try recovering a branch by reseting your branch to the sha of the commit found using a command like:

    git fsck --full --no-reflogs --unreachable --lost-found | grep commit | cut -d\  -f3 | xargs -n 1 git log -n 1 --pretty=oneline > .git/lost-found.txt

2.You can then display each commit using one of these:

    git log -p 
    git cat-file -p