I need to delete a commit to a fork

Question

OK, I did something stupid.

• I forked a repo I am supposed to contribute to.
• So I then literally created a file called "blafile" to check I can commit (obviously I did not understand what a fork is) and committed with a message "check I can commit".
• I pushed to my github forked repo and forgot about it.
• I started fixing a bug on the next day.
• I committed my fix and pushed to my forked repo with message "fixed bug xyz".

Now I wanted to issue a pull request, and all of a sudden I see my "check I can commit" commit. I'd rather not like that to appear on the pull request. :)

Can I entirely delete that commit? Can I issue a pull request on a single commit or will it pull all my commits?

I know I can locally git reset --hard HEAD~1(it's a small fix I could redo quickly) but that only fixes my local repo, not my github (forked) repo.

Answer 1

Lots of options.

The best option is probably to make a new branch and cherry-pick your fix into that branch:

git checkout -b my-fix-branch origin/master
git cherry-pick master
git push -u origin my-fix-branch

then do a pull request from my-fix-branch on GitHub. (This assumes your working branch is named master, based off the remote master; change the branch names as appropriate).

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IF nobody has pulled or cloned your fork, you can rewrite history forcefully. Do git rebase -i HEAD~2 and delete the offending commit, then git push --force. This will break any other repo based on your fork, so do not do this if you suspect anyone else is using your repo.