How to recover a git branch you accidentally deleted

git-recover-branch.md

Oops! I accidentally deleted a local git branch, and I haven't pushed it to a remote server yet. The branch has several important commits, and it hasn't been merged with any other branches yet. How do I find the missing branch?

1. Create a list of all dangling or unreachable commits.

$ git fsck --full --no-reflogs --unreachable --lost-found
unreachable tree 4a407b1b09e0d8a16be70aa1547332432a698e18
unreachable tree 5040d8cf08c78119e66b9a3f8c4b61a240229259
unreachable tree 60c0ce61b040f5e604850f747f525e88043dae12
unreachable tree f080522d06b9853a2f18eeeb898724da4af7aed9
unreachable blob bf01f514add2ada00a7ae5c666493d30d639018c
...

These commits are copied into .git/lost-found/commit/, and non-commit objects are copied into .git/lost-found/other/.

2. Print a list of commit messages for all commits in the lost and found.

$ ls -1 .git/lost-found/commit/ | xargs -n 1 git log -n 1 --pretty=oneline
63b65d3784b16f92bb370ad6a2c1091a05824ecc Call #to_s on value before calling some string methods, like gsub
6ed99e63db69ca04f0cc78081a1fd471289551b2 On master: search and reset page
973d9be3e2cefcd0c5801ad9cd1b2e18774b4bee Rename decorator proxy to decorator context
9ae38fc6b0548cab08ccee1178db0ba0edeafdb2 foo
9e994ca0c0c4785ab45bf64b367fdacccc4575a9 foo [#12345]
9efa6b28b3b0a89c312484f28cf589385d613dfd On master: mysql db config
c57a67c7e1c21fa0c32f152e73d8c3376cad19a0 bar
cb3d67e1aa2226ab9d816fc541f36ff698bfda41 WIP on master: 40a4453 Use #website_url instead of #template_url or #url
def0a251bd29b7fc54a5622e364711f60097b826 Example tabs for export show page (no styles)w

3. Find your missing commit through the process of manual inspection (i.e. reading).

If you need more information on a commit, you can always use a more detailed log command, such as git log -p --stat --color 9ae38fc.

4. Create a new branch with the missing commit as the branch head.

$ git checkout -b branch-name 9ae38fc
Switched to a new branch 'branch-name'