Lost weeks of work organizing branch in a repository

[jositocode]

Wrong push and organization

Question

Body

Is there a way to restore a repository that has been modify yesterday? It does not show in Deleted Repositories because I didn't deleted, I reorganized the main branch because we had some wrong alignment in it and the project went back too many weeks. Before I organized the main branch, I had made a commit and push with the current project, is there a possibility to restore it to that version even thought we force --push and overwrite them wrongly?

[Minal-Arunashalam]

If you have the repo locally, check the git reflog by running this command in your terminal:

git reflog main

Look for the commit hash you want (the one before you did the force push), and then do:

git reset --hard <commit-hash>
git push --force origin main

If you don't have the commit locally, check if any team members do, or check any PRs or branches that might have the commit.

[jositocode]

I guess I only have the option with Github directly and see if they can help since I see only 2 commits for the branch.

The correct project was pushed to a folder/folder within the main branch. Then we do the reorganization to the main branch and now the commits don't show a history because the folder/folder does not exist anymore and only takes the commits done to the main branch, not to the folder/folder with is already deleted.

I just don't understand how it went back moving files.

[HarshitaKhare28]

Just adding to what was already suggested above,

If you or anyone on the team don’t have the commits locally and there’s no backup branch or PR containing them, it could be worth reaching out to GitHub Support. Sometimes they can help recover commits that were accidentally overwritten by a force push, especially if it happened recently.

Also, for the future, it’s a good idea to quickly create a backup branch before doing a git push --force:

git checkout -b backup-before-force
git push origin backup-before-force

[jositocode]

I already contacted them, hoping they can help!
I really appreciate the comments and the tips to avoid future mistakes.

[cruzrafaelx]

Hey how did you contact them? And were you able to recover your previous repo?

[Ramakant2124]

Yes, it is possible to restore a repository state even after a force push, as long as the previous commits still exist in your local Git history (reflog) or on the remote server. If you made the commit and pushed it before the force push, you can use git reflog to view your recent history and recover the lost commit by checking out its hash and creating a new branch from it. Git hosting platforms like GitHub or GitLab may also retain the commit in their visual network history or pull request logs. Additionally, running git fsck --lost-found can help identify dangling commits. If someone else cloned or fetched the repo before the force push, they might have a copy of the lost commit in their local reflog. However, if no one has it locally and the remote server has purged the commit, it may be permanently lost. To prevent such issues in the future, always create a backup branch or push to a temporary branch before doing a force push.

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