Make the current commit the only (initial) commit

Question

I currently have a local Git repository, which I push to a Github repository.

The local repository has ~10 commits, and the Github repository is a synchronised duplicate of this.

What I'd like to do is remove ALL the version history from the local Git repository, so the current contents of the repository appear as the only commit (and therefore older versions of files within the repository are not stored).

I'd then like to push these changes to Github.

I have investigated Git rebase, but this appears to be more suited to removing specific versions. Another potential solution is to delete the local repo, and create a new one - though this would probably create a lot of work!

ETA: There are specific directories / files that are untracked - if possible I would like to maintain the untracking of these files.

Answer 1

The other option, which could turn out to be a lot of work if you have a lot of commits, is an interactive rebase (assuming your git version is >=1.7.12):git rebase --root -i

When presented with a list of commits in your editor:

• Change "pick" to "reword" for the first commit
• Change "pick" to "fixup" every other commit

Save and close. Git will start rebasing.

At the end you would have a new root commit that is a combination of all the ones that came after it.

The advantage is that you don't have to delete your repository and if you have second thoughts you always have a fallback.

If you really do want to nuke your history, reset master to this commit and delete all other branches.

Answer 2

Here's the brute-force approach. It also removes the configuration of the repository.

Note: This does NOT work if the repository has submodules! If you are using submodules, you should use e.g. interactive rebase

Step 1: remove all history (Make sure you have backup, this cannot be reverted)

cat .git/config  # note <github-uri>
rm -rf .git

Step 2: reconstruct the Git repo with only the current content

git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"

Step 3: push to GitHub.

git remote add origin <github-uri>
git push -u --force origin master

Answer 3

The method below is exactly reproducible, so there's no need to run clone again if both sides were consistent, just run the script on the other side too.

git log -n1 --format=%H >.git/info/grafts
git filter-branch -f
rm .git/info/grafts

If you then want to clean it up, try this script:

http://sam.nipl.net/b/git-gc-all-ferocious

I wrote a script which "kills history" for each branch in the repository:

http://sam.nipl.net/b/git-kill-history

see also: http://sam.nipl.net/b/confirm

Answer 4

The only solution that works for me (and keeps submodules working) is

git checkout --orphan newBranch
git add -A  # Add all files and commit them
git commit
git branch -D master  # Deletes the master branch
git branch -m master  # Rename the current branch to master
git push -f origin master  # Force push master branch to github
git gc --aggressive --prune=all     # remove the old files

Deleting .git/ always causes huge issues when I have submodules. Using git rebase --root would somehow cause conflicts for me (and take long since I had a lot of history).

Answer 5

To remove the last commit from git, you can simply run

git reset --hard HEAD^ 

If you are removing multiple commits from the top, you can run

git reset --hard HEAD~2 

to remove the last two commits. You can increase the number to remove even more commits.

More info here.

Git tutoturial here provides help on how to purge repository:

you want to remove the file from history and add it to the .gitignore to ensure it is not accidentally re-committed. For our examples, we're going to remove Rakefile from the GitHub gem repository.

git clone https://github.com/defunkt/github-gem.git

cd github-gem

git filter-branch --force --index-filter \
  'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch Rakefile' \
  --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all

Now that we've erased the file from history, let's ensure that we don't accidentally commit it again.

echo "Rakefile" >> .gitignore

git add .gitignore

git commit -m "Add Rakefile to .gitignore"

If you're happy with the state of the repository, you need to force-push the changes to overwrite the remote repository.

git push origin master --force

Answer 6

I solved a similar issue by just deleting the .git folder from my project and reintegrating with version control through IntelliJ. Note: The .git folder is hidden. You can view it in the terminal with ls -a , and then remove it using rm -rf .git .