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

Asked 13/3, 2012 at 11:41 Answered 30/1 at 15:4

893

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.

Rotorua answered 13/3, 2012 at 11:41 Comment(4)

See also #436146 ("How do I combine the first two commits of a Git repository?") – Chin 13/3, 2012 at 11:56

Possibly related: How do I combine the first two commits of a Git repository?. – Pottage 15/5, 2014 at 8:59

and this: How to squash all git commits into one? – Septima 17/11, 2017 at 4:15

See also https://mcmap.net/q/53490/-make-the-current-commit-the-only-initial-commit-in-a-git-repository – Octogenarian 14/12, 2021 at 5:15

1139

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

Cordovan answered 13/3, 2012 at 11:41 Comment(17)

Thanks larsmans - I have opted to use this as my solution. Though initialising the Git repo loses record of untracked files in the old repo, this is probably a simpler solution for my problem. – Rotorua 13/3, 2012 at 12:14

@kaese: I think your .gitignore should handle those, right? – Cordovan 13/3, 2012 at 12:44

Save your .git/config before, and restore it after. – Eskimoaleut 19/4, 2014 at 8:35

@Eskimoaleut If you restore .git/config after git commit -m "Initial commit" then you can probably skip the git remote add ... part, assuming that was already in your config, and move straight on to pushing. It worked for me. – Buxton 17/11, 2015 at 3:51

Deleting the .git folder may cause problems in your git repository. If you want to delete all your commit history but keep the code in its current state, it is very safe to do it as in the following: https://mcmap.net/q/12240/-how-to-delete-all-commit-history-in-github-duplicate – Defensible 16/1, 2016 at 9:26

Be careful with this if you are trying to remove sensitive data: the presence of only a single commit in the newly pushed master branch is misleading - the history will still exist it just won't be accessible from that branch. If you have tags, for example, which point to older commits, these commits will be accessible. In fact, for anyone with a bit of git foo, I'm sure that after this git push, they will still be able to recover all history from the GitHub repository - and if you have other branches or tags, then they don't even need much git foo. – Inoperable 3/5, 2016 at 9:5

So many bad answers in the world and after an hour I finally got this to do my bidding! – Ober 23/4, 2017 at 16:52

push to GitLab - error: #32247003 – Arbutus 24/4, 2017 at 13:4

@RobertMuil is it safe now? Could you edit it if not? – Dingman 17/5, 2017 at 13:28

@Dingman I don't know for sure, but I don't think it is: the wiki hasn't changed since I made my previous comment. I won't edit because I don't know an easy solution apart from completely deleting all repos... – Inoperable 22/5, 2017 at 16:16

Does this send only the modified portions of the repository? e.g. if I have a large file F already in the top commit and do this, will the forced push send F's contents again over the wire? – Atlantis 19/4, 2018 at 13:23

Above still not removed all history what I had to change was one extra command at the end: git push origin --mirror – Tessatessellate 23/11, 2018 at 14:39

So this answer is not a real solution? – Tremble 30/7, 2020 at 12:18

Using @Zeelot's answer below was the easiest and least destructive way to purge the history. It should be the selected answer – Midtown 31/3, 2021 at 17:8

why not use mv .git .git-old which would be safer, then remove .git-old when finished? Also, you can initially run git ls-files > files.txt and then add them back with a simple cat files.txt | awk '{print "git add " $0 }' | sh – Standby 19/12, 2021 at 9:1

Hi, related to this full history rewrite, is there some ways to actually forbid this as part of repositories permissions in bitbucket cloud ? – Berthold 24/6, 2022 at 8:56

please make sure to fire this command before git init git config --global init.defaultBranch main – Zo 31/7, 2022 at 20:9

848

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).

Libbi answered 27/10, 2012 at 18:16 Comment(19)

this should be the correct answer! just add a git push -f origin master as the last op and sun will shine again on your fresh repo! :) – Faina 7/1, 2014 at 13:30

This solutions works locally. What if I have a remote master? Will have side effects ? – Bixler 23/4, 2014 at 22:0

Does this not keep old commits around? – Wynn 26/4, 2014 at 5:15

@JonePolvora git fetch; git reset --hard origin/master #4785607 – Horick 2/5, 2014 at 17:41

after doing this, will the repo free space? – Mcadams 28/8, 2014 at 15:32

@Brad: I was wondering the same thing. Seems that --orphan only gets the last commit so that the remaining ones are thrown away when the branch is deleted. Reference: git-scm.com/docs/git-checkout – Ilex 23/11, 2014 at 10:24

Good for times when you're not using Github – Kamilah 27/6, 2015 at 17:44

This doesn't work with a remote repo? I've used the script, but with no success. My .git folder is still huge. I've also tried scripts by @Faina and echo. Any advice? – Corcoran 6/7, 2015 at 9:57

The cleanest way to achieve the desired result. – Gonnella 8/3, 2016 at 14:56

Tried the accepted answer exactly as it is written and it didn't work. Tried this answer exactly as it is written, worked like a charm. This should be the accepted answer! – Herring 10/9, 2016 at 14:31

Git will keep the old files around for a while, to get rid of them run git gc --aggressive --prune=all. In addition, git will continue to store history for any commits that are referenced with branches or tags. To check, run git tag -l and git branch -v, then delete any you find. Also double check your remote with git ls-remote, you may need to delete remote tags/branches as well or when you fetch you will get all the linked files again. – Homograft 15/9, 2016 at 7:48

I believe you should add @JasonGoemaat 's suggestion as the last line to your answer. Without git gc --aggressive --prune all the whole point of losing history would be missed. – Abstain 22/10, 2016 at 12:19

Instead of deleting original master branch, one can rename it git branch -m master old_master and set push mode to current-branch-only git config --local push.default current. This way one can keep historical commits in separate branch and work in sync with repo in the fresh master. – Erbes 9/11, 2016 at 21:6

This does not work. I do get this error: git branch -M master -f error: refname refs/heads/newBranch not found – Alost 7/5, 2018 at 11:48

This should be the accepted answer. Deleting .git and similar stuff is unsafe since it does not guarantee the same tree state after recommiting the files. – Odeen 20/9, 2019 at 8:39

Important note for thos working with GitLab, BitBucket, etc... stackoverflow.com/questions/48029867 – Animate 8/10, 2019 at 10:21

Perfect solution, thank you! Worth mentioning that when I did it on a protected master branch I got a "pre hook declined error" I had to unprotect the branch and retry. Worked like a charm. – Concinnous 2/1, 2020 at 2:55

This was the only working solution in my case! Thanks! – Sardella 21/8, 2020 at 12:2

This does the job but wouldn't free disk space until issuing git reflog expire --expire-unreachable=all --all followed by the mentioned git gc (it might do that some time later automatically, dunno) – Matrimonial 7/10, 2020 at 11:42

127

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.

Samuel answered 22/3, 2013 at 13:53 Comment(6)

Best approach! Clear, and do the work. Additionally, i rename the branch with a lot of changes from "master" to "local-work" and "new_branch_name" to "master". In master, do following: git -m local-changes git branch -m local-changes git checkout new_branch_name git branch -m master< – Helios 9/2, 2015 at 12:46

This looks really short and sleek, the only thing I don't understand or haven't seen yet is HEAD^{tree}, could somebody explain? Apart from that I'd read this as "create new branch from given commit, created by creating a new commit-object with given commit-message from ___" – Ponytail 15/2, 2017 at 8:10

The definitive place to look for answers to questions about git reference syntax is in the git-rev-parse docs. What's happening here is git-commit-tree requires a reference to a tree (a snapshot of the repo), but HEAD is a revision. To find the tree associated with a commit we use the <rev>^{<type>} form. – Samuel 15/2, 2017 at 20:48

Nice answer. Works well. Finally say git push --force <remote> new_branch_name:<remote-branch> – Polariscope 11/12, 2017 at 22:1

And everything in one line: git branch newbranch $(echo "commit message" | git commit-tree HEAD^{tree}) | git push --force origin newbranch:master – Kinsey 13/10, 2020 at 17:57

if one wants to overtakte the commit message of the last commit, use git branch newbranch $(git log -1 --pretty=%B | git commit-tree HEAD^{tree}) | git push --force github newbranch:master – Aggrandize 13/10, 2023 at 12:44

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.

Steamy answered 14/3, 2012 at 20:24 Comment(2)

After rebase completed, I can not push: error: failed to push some refs to – Hatshepsut 12/3, 2019 at 14:37

@Begueradj if you've already pushed the branch you rebased, then you will need to force push git push --force-with-lease. force-with-lease is used because it is less destructive than --force. – Steamy 14/3, 2019 at 20:4

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

Eskimoaleut answered 19/4, 2014 at 8:58 Comment(0)

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).

Candiscandle answered 12/2, 2019 at 5:28 Comment(4)

I think you forgot to force push master to complete the procedure. – Authorized 7/3, 2019 at 13:8

I had to make a slight modification. git branch will include an asterisk next to your checked out branch, which will then be globbed, causing it to resolve to all files or folders as if those were branch names too. Instead, I used git branch --format="%(refname:lstrip=2)" which gave me just the branch names. – Paradrop 21/8, 2019 at 21:36

@not2qubit: Thanks for this. What would be the exact command? git push --force origin master, or git push --force-with-lease? Apparently the latter is safer (see #5510043) – Candiscandle 21/8, 2019 at 22:35

@BenRichards. Interesting. I'll try this again at some point with a folder that matches a branch name to test it, then update the answer. Thanks. – Candiscandle 21/8, 2019 at 22:37

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.

Mucosa answered 28/9, 2020 at 16:58 Comment(0)

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/

Eskil answered 4/4, 2016 at 11:5 Comment(3)

Such clone can not be pushed to a new repository. – Erbes 9/11, 2016 at 20:53

It would be useful to know how to circumvent that limitation. Can someone explain why this can't be force pushed? – Authorized 12/3, 2019 at 8:51

The answer to your question: #6900603 – Eskil 12/3, 2019 at 10:51

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?

Elspeth answered 31/12, 2018 at 18:31 Comment(2)

One of the main points is to be able to see where it was forked from. – Authorized 7/3, 2019 at 12:44

I just did this and it is fine – Damask 21/12, 2019 at 9:29

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.

Agranulocytosis answered 5/4, 2014 at 1:42 Comment(0)

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.

Goatskin answered 4/4, 2016 at 11:27 Comment(2)

Nice addition, when seen in context of @Libbi 's answer. – Jola 2/9, 2019 at 7:54

Yup, Zeelot's has the commands which basically do this (just differently, by starting completely over, which might just be fine for OP). @MogensTrasherDK – Goatskin 9/9, 2019 at 10:58

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

Mignonne answered 29/3, 2023 at 17:54 Comment(0)

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

Vocation answered 19/3, 2021 at 15:36 Comment(1)

How does this answer differ from the community wiki answer, or otherwise add value? – Debrief 17/3, 2022 at 15:4

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

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