Git ORIG_HEAD

Today I learned that ORIG_HEAD is a reference that git maintains to the previous commit HEAD pointed to before it “was modified in a drastic way”.

The docs mention these operations as examples of when ORIG_HEAD is updated: (git am, git merge, git rebase, git reset)

This is useful when you want to undo one of those operations.

You can use git reset --hard ORIG_HEAD (or --keep) to put your branch back to where it was before the operation.