What happens under the hood when you hit "reset connection" in Project Settings?

[jamesnestler]

Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 7, 2020
 

When a user hits 'Reset Connection’ in Project Settings, Looker executes a function called revert_repo() calling two jgit commands, reset and clean:

• resetCommand

By default, reset simply changes the `HEAD` the current branch is pointing at. The `HEAD` reference is found with a call that returns the reference id of the most recent commit to master.

When Looker performs the reset, it uses the parameter `--HARD` to reset both the HEAD and the index of the current working directory. You will recall that the index defines where different commits are on the git tree. Therefore, this reset --HARD essentially updates all references in the git tree, ensuring the map is accurate

Source: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Reset-Demystified

• clean

Clean removes all untracked files. In the context of git reset, this means that after the tree has been updated, all files not appearing on the tree will be removed.

Why does this `magically` solve git problems?

If resetting the connection solves issues with being able to pull, commit or push branches, this implies that the git tree became corrupted in some way, which updating references and cleaning up files was able to resolve.

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