Git remove root commit

Question

I can't do a lot of things with git and I want to remove a commit from my repo, because I uploaded wrong stuff.

I used git revert <the_commit> but since the commit is root and I can't remove it. fatal: Cannot revert a root commit

What to do in that case ?

Please don't give me links to other topics here, I read them and I don't understand what to do, I need some basic example about removing some commit.

score 29 · Answer 1 · answered May 27 '11 at 08:58

You can do this using git filter-branch. First, identify the commit ID at the root that you want to remove. I'll represent that with <the_commit>. Then, run git filter-branch using --parent-filter and a sed command that snips off that parent:

git filter-branch --parent-filter "sed 's/-p <the_commit>//'" HEAD

Here's a transcript of an example I just tried:

$ git log
commit 7e1ba37b51fc2cc6289cf66367c9aedc74c664a8
Author: Greg Hewgill <greg@example.com>
Date:   Fri May 27 20:54:27 2011 +1200

    three

commit a8a410d2361824cbd518a48225e9402a691be93f
Author: Greg Hewgill <greg@example.com>
Date:   Fri May 27 20:54:17 2011 +1200

    two

commit 3171d512d98f6bc5f3c2469312930c0d32d3aa07
Author: Greg Hewgill <greg@example.com>
Date:   Fri May 27 20:54:00 2011 +1200

    one
$ git filter-branch --parent-filter "sed 's/-p 3171d512d98f6bc5f3c2469312930c0d32d3aa07//'" HEAD
Rewrite 7e1ba37b51fc2cc6289cf66367c9aedc74c664a8 (3/3)
Ref 'refs/heads/master' was rewritten
$ git log
commit 489ec1ee20e0dd20cd835ceebf157f628cd75a44
Author: Greg Hewgill <greg@example.com>
Date:   Fri May 27 20:54:27 2011 +1200

    three

commit a6f5ee410c9ea4fca6fbff265149b7fc555241eb
Author: Greg Hewgill <greg@example.com>
Date:   Fri May 27 20:54:17 2011 +1200

    two
$

This is an extremely helpful answer and I have verified that it works. Thanks! — Jody Bruchon, Jul 11 '20 at 19:26

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered May 27 '11 at 09:12

For removing a root commit, you simply have to remove all branches (and tags) from which it is reachable.

This can be done with git branch -D branch-name. (You will have to first check out another branch which does not refer to this root commit, since you can't remove the current branch, I think.)

If you want to retain other commits on this branch and only remove the root, git filter-branch is better, see the answer from Greg.

Git remove root commit

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