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Challengegit

Git Recovery & History Surgery — Challenge

Destroy work four different ways and get it back, then remove a secret from history and understand why that is not the fix.

Time
22 min
Level
Intermediate
Objectives
4 objectives
Cost
Free

Before you start

You will need

  • git 2.30+

You will be able to

  • Recover commits after a hard reset, a deleted branch or a bad rebase
  • Choose between revert, reset and restore deliberately
  • Remove a file from history, and know what that does not achieve

CostFree

— a local repository is enough.

You are done when

0 of 4

The goal#

Achieve the same outcome as Git Recovery & History Surgery, from an empty starting point, without the steps.

You reset the wrong branch. A colleague force-pushed over your work. There is an API key in a commit from three weeks ago.

All three are recoverable, and knowing that changes how confidently you work.

What must be true when you are done#

  • You recovered work after reset --hard, after deleting a branch, and after an aborted rebase.
  • You can state when revert is correct and when reset is.
  • A committed secret is gone from every commit, verified by searching history.
  • You can explain why removing it is still not sufficient.

Rules#

  • Do not open the guided lab until you are finished, or until the same problem has held you up for 20 minutes.
  • Documentation is allowed and encouraged.
  • Verify every criterion with a command whose output you can read.

If you get stuck#

  1. What did you expect, exactly?
  2. What happened instead — the error text, not a paraphrase?
  3. Which layer is that error from?
  4. What is the smallest command that proves the layer below is fine?

The concept behind it

Stuck?Open the guided lab

Next up

Lab 7 of 58 on the project path

Professional Collaboration on GitHubProtect a branch, require review, and make the pipeline the thing that decides whether code can merge.45 minIntermediate