Make the current commit the only (initial) commit in a Git repository?

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

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 a backup, this cannot be reverted)

cat .git/config  # save your <github-uri> somewhere
rm -rf .git

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

Before step 2 if you have not set up init.defaultBranch configuration then, please do it via git config --global init.defaultBranch <branch-name> you may choose main as <branch-name> in the current example

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 main

Answer 2

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 3

This is my favoured approach:

git branch new_branch_name $(echo "commit message" | git commit-tree HEAD^{tree})

This will create a new branch with one commit that adds everything in HEAD. It doesn't alter anything else, so it's completely safe.

Answer 4

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 5

Variant of larsmans's proposed method:

Save your untrackfiles list:

git ls-files --others --exclude-standard > /tmp/my_untracked_files

Save your git configuration:

mv .git/config /tmp/

Then perform larsmans's first steps:

rm -rf .git
git init
git add .

Restore your config:

mv /tmp/config .git/

Untrack you untracked files:

cat /tmp/my_untracked_files | xargs -0 git rm --cached

Then commit:

git commit -m "Initial commit"

And finally push to your repository:

git push -u --force origin master

Answer 6

Below is a script adapted from @Zeelot 's answer. It should remove the history from all branches, not just the master branch:

for BR in $(git branch); do   
  git checkout $BR
  git checkout --orphan ${BR}_temp
  git commit -m "Initial commit"
  git branch -D $BR
  git branch -m $BR
done;
git gc --aggressive --prune=all

It worked for my purposes (I am not using submodules).

Answer 7

This deletes the history on the master branch (you might want to make a backup before running the commands):

git branch tmp_branch $(echo "commit message" | git commit-tree HEAD^{tree})
git checkout tmp_branch
git branch -D master
git branch -m master
git push -f --set-upstream origin master

This is based on the answer from @dan_waterworth.

Answer 8

You could use shallow clones (git > 1.9):

git clone --depth depth remote-url

Further reading: http://blogs.atlassian.com/2014/05/handle-big-repositories-git/

Answer 9

Just delete the Github repo and create a new one. By far the fastest, easiest and safest approach. After all, what do you have to gain carrying out all those commands in the accepted solution when all you want is the master branch with a single commit?

Answer 10

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).

A more conceptual answer:

git automatically garbage collects old commits if no tags/branches/refs point to them. So you simply have to remove all tags/branches and create a new orphan commit, associated with any branch - by convention you would let the branch master point to that commit.

The old, unreachable commits will then never again be seen by anyone unless they go digging with low-level git commands. If that is enough for you, I would just stop there and let the automatic GC do it's job whenever it wishes to. If you want to get rid of them right away, you can use git gc (possibly with --aggressive --prune=all). For the remote git repository, there's no way for you to force that though, unless you have shell access to their file system.

Answer 11

git filter-branch is the major-surgery tool.

git filter-branch --parent-filter true -- @^!

--parent-filter gets the parents on stdin and should print the rewritten parents on stdout; unix true exits successfully and prints nothing, so: no parents. @^! is Git shorthand for "the head commit but not any of its parents". Then delete all the other refs and push at leisure.

Answer 12

All the answers are awesome but I would like to put another approach with simple commands

git clone --depth 1 <remote-url> .
git commit --amend -m <commit message you want>
git push --force

Answer 13

Here are the steps to clear out the history of a Github repository

First, remove the history from .git

rm -rf .git

Now, recreate the git repos from the current content only

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

Push to the Github remote repos ensuring you overwrite history

git remote add origin [email protected]:<YOUR ACCOUNT>/<YOUR REPOS>.git
git push -u --force origin master

Answer 14

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 15

Here you go:

#!/bin/bash
#
# By Zibri (2019)
#
# Usage: gitclean username password giturl
#
gitclean () 
{ 
    odir=$PWD;
    if [ "$#" -ne 3 ]; then
        echo "Usage: gitclean username password giturl";
        return 1;
    fi;
    temp=$(mktemp -d 2>/dev/null /dev/shm/git.XXX || mktemp -d 2>/dev/null /tmp/git.XXX);
    cd "$temp";
    url=$(echo "$3" |sed -e "s/[^/]*\/\/\([^@]*@\)\?\.*/\1/");
    git clone "https://$1:$2@$url" && { 
        cd *;
        for BR in "$(git branch|tr " " "\n"|grep -v '*')";
        do
            echo working on branch $BR;
            git checkout $BR;
            git checkout --orphan $(basename "$temp"|tr -d .);
            git add -A;
            git commit -m "Initial Commit" && { 
                git branch -D $BR;
                git branch -m $BR;
                git push -f origin $BR;
                git gc --aggressive --prune=all
            };
        done
    };
    cd $odir;
    rm -rf "$temp"
}

Also hosted here: https://gist.github.com/Zibri/76614988478a076bbe105545a16ee743

Answer 16

pip install commitcleaner
cd {your project}
commitcleaner

This command will remove commit history of a current branch. I referenced this answer of similar thread and then created a pip installable python project for easy usage.

Answer 17

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 .

Answer 18

For that use Shallow Clone command git clone --depth 1 URL - It will clones only the current HEAD of the repository

Answer 19

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