I am having a bit of an issue trying to figure out the best route in fixing the following.  What happened is on my second machine, in which was out dated (source code), I upgraded to VS 2026 (from 2022), then tried to do  a pull.  What happened was that I received a bunch of modifications, which was confusing. All I want is to pull all changes since I did last on this machine.  I then had a bit of a problem with the gitignore file, so I decided to just commit it (my train of thought is it is a file being committed to source control - that is it).  However, what happened is this file took on a life and decided to make itself the head and bypass all changes to the head in which it knew about last.  Please see image below where the history shows a line from this commit to the parent below.  This by passes a bunch of chances.

Question: How can I fix this issue?  I would like to restore all my changes again and remove this bypass.   I have been reviewing your documentation, but am very hesitant as my understanding, once again, may not match how GIT actually functions.

I greatly appreciate the help!

In this example, Commit 3 was done on July 12 and since it was on a machine that had done its last pull on 6/09/2026, the commit created a new parent below Commit 5.  Now when I pull, the changes for Commit4, Commit5 are not included in the pull.    I am assuming I need to do a rebase, but am not 100% confident and in reading the documentation, I am still not confident.

--Commit6 7/14/2026
--Commit5  7/13/2026
|<-Commit4  7/12/2026  -child
|  --Commit2  6/11/2026
|  --Commit1  6/10/2026
|>-Commit4   7/12/2026  -parent

Randy