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 this message:

fatal: ambiguous argument 'HEAD~1': unknown revision or path not in the working tree. 

This commit is the first commit of the repository. Any idea how to undo git's initial commit?

Answer 1

You can delete the HEAD and restore your repository to a new state, where you can create a new initial commit:

git update-ref -d HEAD 

After you create a new commit, if you have already pushed to remote, you will need to force it to the remote in order to overwrite the previous initial commit:

git push --force origin 

Answer 2

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.