How to remove commits from a pull request

Question

I did a pull request but after that I made some commits to the project locally which ended polluting my pull request, I tried to remove it but without any luck.

I found some similar questions on StackOverflow but I can't apply what's in there. It's my first pull request on GitHub so it's kinda strange to me how all of this works.

The highlighted commit is the one I need to keep and remove all the other stuff. It becomes the fourth commit in the history because I make some merge stuff.

my git log

Can someone please explain what's going on and how to fix this problem?

You need to [rebase](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Branching-Rebasing), and only "pick" the "added from github" commit (i.e. comment out the lines for every other commit) — scrowler, Mar 23 '16 at 02:44
rebase what branch onto what branch can you please add more explanation. — humazed, Mar 23 '16 at 02:50
`what branch` = the branch you're working on, `onto what branch` = the branch you're pull requesting into — scrowler, Mar 23 '16 at 02:50
I explained what @Robbie Averill hinted in my answer. It's strange that nobody wrote an answer explaining this until now. — Ferit, Jul 20 '18 at 15:32
related: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62951901/is-it-possible-to-remove-a-modified-file-from-a-github-pull-request-via-the-gith — gman, Jul 17 '20 at 12:52

Ferit · Answer 1 · 2018-09-06T06:12:59.250

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People wouldn't like to see a wrong commit and a revert commit to undo changes of the wrong commit. This pollutes commit history.

Here is a simple way for removing the wrong commit instead of undoing changes with a revert commit.

git checkout my-pull-request-branch
git rebase -i HEAD~n // where n is the number of last commits you want to include in interactive rebase.
Replace pick with drop for commits you want to discard.
Save and exit.
git push --force

edited Sep 06 '18 at 06:12

answered Jul 18 '18 at 11:14

Ferit

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this worked for me like a charm. I had bunch of commits which shouldnt have been in the PR. I just interactive rebased it, dropped those commits and pushed them back – FullStackEngineer Jul 18 '18 at 15:39
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You should sync with remote master before starting a pr anyway, no? – Ferit Jul 20 '18 at 12:39
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To push I had to do: `git push origin HEAD:myBranch --force`. But otherwise great and helpful. – ScottyBlades Sep 28 '18 at 19:33
@ScottyBlades I omitted that part intentionally as it's out of scope. If you didn't set the tracking branch you either need to set it or, like you did, push explicitly. – Ferit Sep 28 '18 at 20:10
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This is also useful when you want to fix an open PR in GitHub, you just need to be able to do a forced push – Vladimir Hidalgo Mar 29 '19 at 02:09
Worked like a charm. Also it is better if you can cherry-pick the commit that you want to separate from the PR to another branch. – Shan Chathusanda Jayathilaka Jan 07 '20 at 10:02
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What do you mean by "Replace `pick` with `drop` for commits you want to discard."? – gosuto Feb 29 '20 at 08:02
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@jorijnsmit they mean after running `git rebase -i HEAD~`, at the top of the file there will `` lines of commits, with each line containing the text `pick `. The commits default to `pick`, so for every commit you want to drop, change the text `pick` to `drop` – Slim Sep 07 '20 at 19:49
Silly question - is the "~" a part of the git rebase -i HEAD~n command? – Doug Kimzey Oct 22 '20 at 14:45
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Not at all. Yeah, it is a part of the command. @DougKimzey – Ferit Oct 24 '20 at 17:11
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This works like a treat. I created a branch that carried over a bunch of commits from the previous branch. So straightforward, unlike alot of git stuff! – Cemal Okten Aug 18 '22 at 14:05
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For all those who don't know how to perform 4. step - Save and exit: type :wq! and press Enter key. – Mile Mijatović Dec 26 '22 at 19:19

CodeWizard · Accepted Answer · 2022-07-02T14:52:23.960

190

You have several techniques to do it.

This post - read the part about the revert will explain in details what we want to do and how to do it.

Here is the most simple solution to your problem:

# Checkout the desired branch
git checkout <branch>

# Undo the desired commit
git revert <commit>

# Update the remote with the undo of the code
# The force is a tricky flag since it will force the push but
# your administrator can block it, so if it's not an option you
# can delete the old branch and push it again
git push origin <branch> --force

The revert command will create a new commit with the undo of the original commit.

edited Jul 02 '22 at 14:52

answered Mar 23 '16 at 06:05

CodeWizard

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Does it work even when we forked the project from some another person and wanna remove some comments in pull request? – Dr.jacky Sep 16 '17 at 06:39
to revert all commit from pull request you only need Merge pull request commit id. # Undo the desired commits from pull request `git revert -m 1` – Techie Nov 03 '21 at 07:09
You are right @Deeppak, just clarifying that the -m stands for the parent of the merge so you might need to use `-m n` instead of 1 – CodeWizard Nov 03 '21 at 07:32

score 14 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 28 '19 at 14:47

If you're removing a commit and don't want to keep its changes @ferit has a good solution.

If you want to add that commit to the current branch, but doesn't make sense to be part of the current pr, you can do the following instead:

use git rebase -i HEAD~n
Swap the commit you want to remove to the bottom (most recent) position
Save and exit
use git reset HEAD^ --soft to uncommit the changes and get them back in a staged state.
use git push --force to update the remote branch without your removed commit.

Now you'll have removed the commit from your remote, but will still have the changes locally.

Be very careful when using `git push --force`. It will completely (and irreversibly) override everything that's on the remote with the contents of your local computer. — Velociround, Nov 24 '22 at 14:22

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 17 '20 at 12:29

This is what helped me:

Create a new branch with the existing one. Let's call the existing one branch_old and new as branch_new.
Reset branch_new to a stable state, when you did not have any problem commit at all. For example, to put it at your local master's level do the following:

git reset —hard master git push —force origin
cherry-pick the commits from branch_old into branch_new
git push

score 4 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 12 '22 at 08:48

4

From your branch fire below commands

git reset --soft origin/master
git commit -m "Detail of Your last commit that you want to see"
git push -f

answered Oct 12 '22 at 08:48

Rajesh N

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score 1 · Answer 6 · edited Aug 27 '18 at 14:44

So do the following ,

Lets say your branch name is my_branch and this has the extra commits.

git checkout -b my_branch_with_extra_commits (Keeping this branch saved under a different name)
gitk (Opens git console)
Look for the commit you want to keep. Copy the SHA of that commit to a notepad.
git checkout my_branch
gitk (This will open the git console )
Right click on the commit you want to revert to (State before your changes) and click on "reset branch to here"
Do a git pull --rebase origin branch_name_to _merge_to
git cherry-pick <SHA you copied in step 3. >

Now look at the local branch commit history and make sure everything looks good.

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Aug 10 '22 at 10:29

If accidentally pushed unnecessary files and wants to remove them from PR then

 1. git reset <commit ID wherever you want to jump> 
 
 2. git restore <file name you want to remove> or git add <all the file
    names you want to add to commit>

 3. git commit -m “new commit message”

 4. git push -f //necessary to push forcefully (if anything is there to pull)

How to remove commits from a pull request

7 Answers7

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