Delete all commit history in GitHub
Today we’ll show you how to delete all commit history in GitHub. It’s a very small but useful article to delete all commit history of the branch and create a fresh commit using git command.
Here, we’ll show you the two different methods to remove all commit history using git commands without removing the repository.
Ways to delete all commit history in GitHub
Method 1: Using an orphan branch
In case, if you are facing any issue to delete the .git folder then you can use this approach. With the help of this method, we can keep the code in its current state.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 | # Checkout to a new temporary branch git checkout --orphan TEMP_BRANCH # Add all the files (If not added) git add -A # Commit the changes in the temporary branch git commit -am "Initial commit message" # Delete the old master branch git branch -D master # Rename the new temporary branch to master git branch -m master # At last, Force update to our repository git push -f origin master |
If this method does not work, try the following method.
Method 2: By deleting the .git folder
In this method, we will remove the git commit history by deleting the .git folder because all the committed history are in the .git folder. Follow the steps to delete all history.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 | # Clone the repository, e.g. `myrepo` is my project repository git clone https://github/cluemediator/myrepo.git # Jump to the repository folder cd myrepo # Delete the `.git` folder rm -rf .git # Re-initialize the repository git init git remote add origin https://github.com/cluemediator/myrepo.git git remote -v # Add all the files and commit the changes git add --all git commit -am "Initial commit message" # Force update to the master branch of our project repository git push -f origin master |
You might need to configure username and email and provide the credentials for your GitHub account. You can also check the list of git commands for your regular use.
That’s it for today.
Thank you for reading. Happy Coding..!! 🙂
