Delete commits from the master branch in Git

Question

I forgot to make a branch before making some code updates and now I have to revert to the initial commit and remove all the commits after the initial one. The work has been saved off somewhere so I'm not at risk of losing it.

I've used the "git reset --hard {SHA}" to reset back to where I need to be, however now I have all the commits that were performed after the initial commit waiting to come back down and sync with my master copy.

I want to delete all commits from 6/10/2015 to 7/2/2015 as they are no longer needed. Does anyone know how to do this?

Answer 1

Removing Remote Commits From Any Branch [Master is a branch]

If you commit something to the remote server that for whatever reason should not have been committed on the particular branch you can remove it using the following steps

If the branch has changes you want to keep - Start at step 1

If you don't care about the changes and simply want to revert to a specific commit - Start at step 3

1. Perform a hard reset and reset the HEAD to the commit you want to create the branch from using the command : git reset --hard {SHA}

   • {SHA} is the commit ID

2. Create the branch and publish it to the server (You risk losing your work if you skip this step)

3. Perform a hard reset to the commit that you want to keep as the HEAD - git reset --hard {SHA}

   • This will result in all the commits that were done after the commit you reset to, will be pending as an incoming sync - Do not sync

4. To nuke the incoming commits perform a force push using the command : git push -f

Answer 2

If nobody else uses this repo, do a git push -f and the server's contents will be overwritten with your contents.

If other people are using this repository (and have pulled since you made the commits you want to remove), they will need to do a hard reset on their end as well after pulling (git reset --hard origin/master, assuming you are on branch master). I would suggest in this case to use git revert to simply undo the effect of your commits instead of trying to eliminate them from the history.