Every engineer should understand git reflog

s a software engineer, you’ve probably wondered how Git’s reflog works under the hood. That’s where this guide comes in.

4 comments

I know when I have to go to the reflog that I've really fucked up
- You haven't really fucked up until you've run garbage collection.
One thing that is not made clear in the article, is that there is a separate reflog for HEAD, and separate reflogs for individual branches.

HEAD reflog logs changes such as "checkout: moving from next to main". Branch reflog logs changes such as "branch: Created from HEAD" (first entry in branch reflog). Most are common to both (i.e. git logs both to HEAD reflog and the reflog of currently checked out branch).
Learned something new today. Thank you.