usually, before you checkout a "past" commit you are on a "current" named branch so, do $ git log <branch_you_were_on_before> In general, most "history" git commands take a commit hash as an argument and HEAD as a default one if none was specified (HEAD is always CURRENT commit (you are on), it is a difference of SVN) when you ran $ git log it was, actually, $ git log HEAD Also, you may specify several commits as arguments of git log It it very usefull to use (in terminal) to see how branches are diverged (on X/Windows gitk is more pretty) $ git log --oneline --graph --decorate <branch1> <branch2> <branchN> There is also "git reflog" command RTM git-reflog > Hello, I a m relatively new to git, and my question pertains to > moving back and forth through the history of my commits. > > Here is how I open a previous commit: > > 1)$ git log > > 2) (get sha1 hash of previous commit) > > 3)$ git checkout <hash of my previous commit> > > the problem is that once I am working with that commit, git log only > shows the hash tags up to the time that the commit was made, but not > any of the later commits. Is there a way to get the hash tags of my > later commits when I am in that rolled back state? > > -- > View this message in context: > http://git.661346.n2.nabble.com/checking-out-later-commits-from-rolled-back-state-tp6951892p6951892.html > Sent from the git mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html