How to remove the first commit in git?

git repository commit git-commit
Weihang Jian picture Weihang Jian · Jun 6, 2012 · Viewed 78k times · Source

I am curious about how to remove the first commit in git.

What is the revision before committing any thing? Does this revision have a name or tag?

Answer

tzi picture tzi · Sep 24, 2015

For me, the most secure way is to use the update-ref command:

git update-ref -d HEAD

It will delete the named reference HEAD, so it will reset (softly, you will not lose your work) all your commits of your current branch.

If what you want is to merge the first commit with the second one, you can use the rebase command:

git rebase -i --root

A last way could be to create an orphan branch, a branch with the same content but without any commit history, and commit your new content on it:

git checkout --orphan <new-branch-name>

Related questions

Git: add vs push vs commit

What is the difference between git add, push and commit? Just a little confused coming from SVN, where "update" will 'add' stuff, and commit does a "push" and will 'add' as well There are all different functions within git. Hoping …

Read More
GitHub - How to revert changes to previous state

I am using GitHub as my remote repository. I have already pushed 5 commits to the server and want to revert back to the state before the those commits. If the commit hash is 3425661dba2aadccdbab, how do I revert the …

Read More
How can I uncommit the last commit in a git bare repository?

Taking into consideration that there are several git commands that make no sense in a bare repository (because bare repositories don't use indexes and do not have a working directory), git reset --hard HEAD^ is not a solution to uncommit …

Read More