git-resetEdit
| Mode | Default? | Updates HEAD? | Touches worktree? | Touches index? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
--soft |
❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | |
--mixed |
✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | |
--hard |
❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | |
--merge |
❌ | ✅ | ✅ (keeps changes) | ✅ (discards staged) | May abort |
--keep |
❌ | ✅ | ✅ (keeps changes) | ✅ | May abort |
Notes
--keep and --merge are the tricky ones; they try to preserve local edits to files ("all" or "most" local edits, respectively) if possible and will abort if they can’t.
--merge is rarely what you want though, because it will blow away any local edits you’ve staged in the index.
Usually, staging something is a cue to Git that you want it to keep hold of something. And --merge doesn’t sound like it might be destructive (unlike --hard), but it is.
In both cases, they’ll abort if the commit you’re trying to reset to touches files that have local changes.