How to revert initial git commit?

Question

I commit to a git repository for the first time; I then regret the commit and want to revert it. I try

# git reset --hard HEAD~1

I get thi

Answer 1

This question was linked from this blog post and an alternative solution was proposed for the newer versions of Git:

git branch -m master old_master
git checkout --orphan master
git branch -D old_master

This solution assumes that:

1. You have only one commit on your master branch
2. There is no branch called old_master so I'm free to use that name

It will rename the existing branch to old_master and create a new, orphaned, branch master (like it is created for new repositories) after which you can freely delete old_master... or not. Up to you.

Note: Moving or copying a git branch preserves its reflog (see this code) while deleting and then creating a new branch destroys it. Since you want to get back to the original state with no history you probably want to delete the branch, but others may want to consider this small note.

Answer 2

I wonder why "amend" is not suggest and have been crossed out by @damkrat, as amend appears to me as just the right way to resolve the most efficiently the underlying problem of fixing the wrong commit since there is no purpose of having no initial commit. As some stressed out you should only modify "public" branch like master if no one has clone your repo...

git add <your different stuff>
git commit --amend --author="author name <author.name@email.com>"-m "new message"

Answer 3

All what you have to do is to revert the commit.

git revert {commit_id}'

Then push it

git push origin -f

Answer 4

I will throw in what worked for me in the end. I needed to remove the initial commit on a repository as quarantined data had been misplaced, the commit had already been pushed.

Make sure you are are currently on the right branch.

git checkout master

git update-ref -d HEAD

git commit -m "Initial commit

git push -u origin master

This was able to resolve the problem.

Important

This was on an internal repository which was not publicly accessible, if your repository was publicly accessible please assume anything you need to revert has already been pulled down by someone else.

Answer 5

git reset --hard make changes, then do

git add -A
git commit --amend --no-edit 

or

git add -A
git commit --amend -m "commit_message"

and then

git push origin master --force

--force will rewrite that commit you've reseted to in the first step.

Don't do this, because you're about to go against the whole idea of VCS systems and git in particular. The only good method is to create new and delete unneeded branch. See git help branch for info.

Answer 6

You just need to delete the branch you are on. You can't use git branch -D as this has a safety check against doing this. You can use update-ref to do this.

git update-ref -d HEAD

Do not use rm -rf .git or anything like this as this will completely wipe your entire repository including all other branches as well as the branch that you are trying to reset.