Unstaging changed file from commit in PR

Question

I'm definitely overcomplicating this, but I am wondering how to "unstage" the changes that were made to a few files inadvertently in a commit in a pull request. Without making a mess in Git.

Basically there were some files in a /dist folder that were slightly changed on accident after the application compiled.

The catch is I am trying to avoid making extra commits or having to squash my commits, if possible. Can this be done with git commit --amend ?

Answer 1

If you have changed the files in PR, and have them currently staged, and don't want to further alter the files in /dist on remote, simply unstage everything on PR ( git reset ), then re-stage all but files in /dist (on PR), and then wipe the local changes to the files in /dist :

git clean -df
git checkout -- .

This won't touch the staged/committed files.

But somehow I have a feeling what you're trying to do is not this uncomplicated.. If you want to revert the files in remote /dist , then it's best to do another commit, perhaps with revert (or if you can afford to rewrite the remote repo history, ie you know for sure others haven't pulled a copy, or can/want to communicate it to the rest of the team, then check out the history-altering approach to undoing the change in my recent other answer ).