I have never had to resort to this technique.  However, there&#x27;s a lot in git I don&#x27;t understand.  I&#x27;ve spent multiple days learning git, and at some point, the diminishing returns of further investment don&#x27;t justify themselves.  If I broke my repo in such a way that caused me to consider re-cloning to &quot;get out of jail&quot;,  I probably would only do it if I didn&#x27;t lose a significant amount of work.  (e.g. copy in-progress files to a safe location before recloning)<p>You say I have very little excuse for my ignorance, but I would also say that I have very little excuse to spend any more time learning a tool with as many dark corners as git.