How to clean all commits from remote github repo

Question

I had by mistake pushed hundreds of commits from my local repo to a newly created github repo. How can I clean/remove all these commits on the remote repo so that github repo is clean as it was in the start? I would like also to lose history on those actions. I would like to do that without affecting my local repo.

I cannot delete the branch as it is the github master branch.

If you're looking to completely reset the history, why not just delete the repo and recreate it? — Matthew Scharley, Jul 27 '11 at 10:18
If it's a new repo, you could always just delete it and push again with the proper commits. — Clueless, Jul 27 '11 at 10:19
well, yes. deleting it and recreating it is how I ended up. I just thought there is some smarter git way to clean it up. — Martin, Jul 27 '11 at 12:47

score 11 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:18

You could:

- git clone <your github repo>
- git reset --hard <an_older_commit> (where you didn't have those huge files)
- git push --force origin master

That way:

Your initial local repo isn't affected (and you can fix it in order to not push again those files)
your remote (GitHub) repo doesn't see anymore those commits with the huge files in it.
GitHub will run a git gc on its side periodically, cleaning completely the unreferenced files.

However the OP Martin mentions:

how can I do reset --hard to the position before the first commit ever?
i.e. I would like to get the repo empty not to rollback to a previous commit

In that case, create a new local repo, make a first small commit, and push --force that commit.
More generally, I always try to have a first small initial commit on master branch when creating a repo, in order to be able to get back to a minimal commit, or to start a new branch (for an unrelated development effort) from said minimal commit.

how can I do reset -hard to the position before the first commit ever — Martin, Jul 27 '11 at 10:44
i.e. I would like to get the repo empty not to rollback to a previous commit — Martin, Jul 27 '11 at 10:45
+1 for *small initial commit*. I always did a `git add . && git commit` but this variant is better! — eckes, Jul 28 '11 at 09:22

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 05 '11 at 20:37

2

git push -f REMOTE COMMIT:BRANCH

For example, to force the branch master at the remote origin to have undo until the commit with the id 123456 you should do

git push -f origin 123456:master

answered Aug 05 '11 at 20:37

Felipe Sabino

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How to clean all commits from remote github repo

2 Answers2