Resetting remote to a certain commit

Question

I want to discard all changes done after commit <commit-hash> . So I did:

git reset --hard <commit-hash>

Now I want to do the same with my remote. How can I do this? I have done some commits (and pushes) after <commit-hash> and I just want to discard them all. Is just something went terribly wrong in the way and I don't want to make it worse than it is already. ;(

I basically want to rewind my origin/master to <commit-hash>

Answer 1

Assuming that your branch is called master both here and remotely, and that your remote is called origin you could do:

 git reset --hard <commit-hash>
 git push -f origin master

However, you should avoid doing this if anyone else is working with your remote repository and has pulled your changes. In that case, it would be better to revert the commits that you don't want, then push as normal.

Update: you've explained below that other people have pulled the changes that you've pushed, so it's better to create a new commit that reverts all of those changes. There's a nice explanation of your options for doing this in this answer from Jakub Narębski. Which one is most convenient depends on how many commits you want to revert, and which method makes most sense to you.

Since from your question it's clear that you have already used git reset --hard to reset your master branch, you may need to start by using git reset --hard ORIG_HEAD to move your branch back to where it was before. (As always with git reset --hard, make sure that git status is clean, that you're on the right branch and that you're aware of git reflog as a tool to recover apparently lost commits.) You should also check that ORIG_HEAD points to the right commit, with git show ORIG_HEAD.

Troubleshooting:

If you get a message like "! [remote rejected] a60f7d85 -> master (pre-receive hook declined)"

then you have to allow branch history rewriting for the specific branch. In BitBucket for example it said "Rewriting branch history is not allowed". There is a checkbox named Allow rewriting branch history which you have to check.

Answer 2

Most other answers – including the accepted one – will result in unnecessary loss of local state.

Local changes are not inherently required to change a remote. You may need to apply local corrections in addition to resetting a remote, but that's a lower priority if your problem is simply that you need to quickly put the remote back to how it was before your push, or you pushed the wrong thing. This method (like any other forced push) has the potential to ruin your remote if you choose the wrong commit, but even then you can usually find the correct one and try again.

You must have the desired commit somewhere in your local repo that the remote should match.

1. Do not do any local resetting, checking out, or branch switching.

2. Use git log to find the commit you want to the remote to be at. Use git log -p to see changes, or git log --graph --all --oneline --decorate to see a compact tree.

   If you cannot find the commit, try checking git reflog which will show the state history of your repo. You may be able to recover the commit from its hash, e.g.:

   git branch <name for branch of rescued commit> <hash of rescued commit>
   

3. Copy the commit's hash, tag, or (if it's the tip) its branch name.

4. Run a command like:

   git push --force <remote> <commit-ish>:<the remote branch>
   

   e.g.

   git push --force origin 606fdfaa33af1844c86f4267a136d4666e576cdc:main
   

   or

   git push --force staging v2.4.0b2:releases
   

If the forced push fails, it's likely disabled by the remote. This may be worked around by temporarily changing one or both of receive.denyNonFastForwards and receive.denyDeletes. If your remote is hosted on a service without shell access, it probably has settings you can change to allow forced pushes.

---

I use a convenient alias (git go, mnemonic "graph oneline") for viewing history, which can be added like so:

git config --global alias.go 'log --graph --oneline --all --decorate'

Answer 3

I solved problem like yours by this commands:

git reset --hard <commit-hash> 
git push -f <remote> <local branch>:<remote branch> 

Answer 4

On GitLab, you may have to set your branch to unprotected before doing this. You can do this in [repo] > Settings > Repository > Protected Branches. Then the method from Mark's answer works.

git reset --hard <commit-hash>
git push -f origin master

Answer 5

If you want a previous version of file, I would recommend using git checkout.

git checkout <commit-hash>

Doing this will send you back in time, it does not affect the current state of your project, you can come to mainline git checkout mainline

but when you add a file in the argument, that file is brought back to you from a previous time to your current project time, i.e. your current project is changed and needs to be committed.

git checkout <commit-hash> -- file_name
git add .
git commit -m 'file brought from previous time'
git push

The advantage of this is that it does not delete history, and neither does revert a particular code changes (git revert)

Check more here https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/undoing-changes#git-checkout

Answer 6

I faced the same problem recently and it got resolved with two steps:

1. Reset it to local git with git reset --hard HEAD~1 here HEAD~1 is most recent commit.
2. Push that in to the desired branch forcefully git push -f origin main.

That's it.

Answer 7

My two cents to the previous answers: if

git push --force <remote> <the-hash>:<the remote branch>

still doesn't work, you might want to edit <your-remote-repo>.git/config file's receive section:

[receive]
  #denyNonFastforwards = true
  denyNonFastforwards = false

Answer 8

Let's assume that your branch is called master both locally and remotely, and that your remote is called origin you could do:

git reflog to get all the commit history, your commit hash has format like this: e34e1ff

git reset --hard <commit-hash>

git push -f origin master

Answer 9

Sourcetree: resetting remote to a certain commit

1. If you have pushed a bad commit to your remote (origin/feature/1337_MyAwesomeFeature) like below picture

2. Go to Remotes > origin > feature > 1337_MyAwesomeFeature
3. Right click and choose "Delete origin/feature/1337_MyAwesomeFeature" (Or change name of it if you want a backup and skip step 4.)
4. Click "Force delete" and "OK".

5. Select your older commit and choose "Reset current branch to this commit"
6. Choose which mode you want to have (Hard if you don't want your last changes) and "OK".

7. Push this commit to a new origin/feature/1337_MyAwesomeFeature

8. Your local feature branch and your remote feature branch are now on the previous (of your choice) commit

Answer 10

If your branch is not development or production, the easiest way to achieve this is resetting to a certain commit locally and create a new branch from there. You can use:

git checkout 000000

(where 000000 is the commit id where you want to go) in your problematic branch and then simply create a new branch:

git remote add [name_of_your_remote]

Then you can create a new PR and all will work fine!

Answer 11

Do one thing, get the commit's SHA no. such as 87c9808 and then,

1. move yourself ,that is your head to the specified commit (by doing git reset --hard 89cef43//mention your number here )
2. Next do some changes in a random file , so that the git will ask you to commit that locally and then remotely Thus, what you need to do now is. after applying change git commit -a -m "trial commit"
3. Now push the following commit (if this has been committed locally) by git push origin master
4. Now what git will ask from you is that

error: failed to push some refs to 'https://github.com/YOURREPOSITORY/AndroidExperiments.git' hint: Updates were rejected because the tip of your current branch is behind hint: its remote counterpart. Integrate the remote changes (e.g. hint: 'git pull ...') before pushing again.**

5. Thus now what you can do is

git push --force origin master

6. And thus, i hope it works :)