Clean git repo on Heroku

Question

The situation is as follows:

We have some project which persists on Github, and deploy it to Heroku, which has its own mini-Git. Some changes were applied directly to Heroku (cloned repository from Heroku, made changes and pushed). In a meanwhile the master branch on Github has gained also some changes.

Now when I want to push the main repository to Heroku, pushing fails because commits on Heroku are out of sync with local commits.

I do not want to merge with changes on Heroku - I just want them to vanish.

Is there some way to clean git repository on Heroku to push then my local repo from the very beginning?

I do not want to destroy application and recreate it again because it has some paid services and I am just an collaborator.

Answer 1

Install the Heroku Repo plugin and use it to reset the remote git repo.

First delete the git repo on the server:

> cd /my-project/ > heroku plugins:install heroku-repo > heroku repo:reset 

Then re-initialise your local git repo by deleting and recreating it:

> cd /my-project/ > rm -rf .git > git init > heroku git:remote -a <appname> 

Where <appname> is name of your app in heroku.

The 2 repos (local and remote) should now be empty and in sync.

Answer 2

You can just use the -f flag in git (it's a standard git flag) to force the push. See the side note in the Dev Center Git doc. This will overwrite those changes you've made on Heroku obviously.