Revert Merge Request

• view graph on github

Scenario

• feature2's MR and feature1's MR are waiting code review

Merge without code review accidentally

• what happened:
  • feature2's author accidentally click the merge button on gitlab merge request ui.
  • Then, gitlab automatically merge feature2 and feature1 into dev, and both MR is mark as merged.
  • feature1 and feature2 can no longer merge to dev, becase they already exist in history.

• first thing to do is revert the merge commit.

  git checkout dev
  git checkout -b revert_feature2
  git revert ${merge commit id} -m 1
  :q
  git checkout dev
  git merge revert-feature2
  git push
  

Merge Features Again

• Needs to open a new merge request for recovered branches, old MR has already marked as merged.

Using Revert(not recommended)

git checkout dev
git checkout -b feature2_Reopen
git revert ${revert commit id} -m 1
:q
git push

Problem

• commit messages of features missing in new MR
• Can't recover feature1 with git revert.
• Some code of feature1 stuck in feature2, such as commits feature1,feature1.1 in above case.

Discussion

• During develop
  • Don't merge any feature branch to other branches, only merge it's base branch to sync updates.
  • Uses rebase to move whole branch to the other branch for some functions.
• Recover feature1 changes
  • we can split revert changes to feature1 and feature2 part with additional branch doing the same merges happened in feature2, such as merge feature1, then merge feature2 we can revert and revert each merges to get changes of feature1 and feature2.

Using Rebase + Force Push

git checkout feature1
git rebase ${dev1 commit id(latest commit merge into feature1)} --ignore-date
git push -f
git checkout feature2
git rebase feature1 --ignore-date
git push -f

Reproduce scenario on gitlab

• init repo

  git clone ${repo/on/gitlab}
  git checkout -b dev
  touch dev1
  git add .
  git commit -m "dev1"
  git checkout -b feature1
  touch feature1
  git add .
  git commit -m "feature1"
  git checkout dev
  touch dev2
  git add .
  git commit -m "dev2"
  git checkout -b feature2
  touch feature2
  git add .
  git commit -m "feature2"
  git checkout feature1
  touch feature1.1
  git add .
  git commit -m "feature1.1" 
  git checkout feature2
  git merge feature1
  touch feature2.1
  echo "change feature1.1" > feature1.1
  git add .
  git commit -m "feature2.1" 
  git checkout dev
  touch dev3
  git add .
  git commit -m "dev3" 
  git push --set-upstream origin dev
  git checkout feature1
  git push --set-upstream origin feature1
  git checkout feature2
  git push --set-upstream origin feature2
  
  

• create MR on gitlab : feature1 to dev, feature2 to dev
• merge MR feature2 to dev
• git remote update --prune and you will see git graph the same as Merge without code review accidentally section.