Remove specific commit

Question

I was working with a friend on a project  and he edited a bunch of files that shouldn t have been edited  Somehow I merged his work into mine  either when I pulled it  or when I tried to just pick the specific files out that I wanted  I ve been looking and playing for a long time  trying to figure out how to remove the commits that contain the edits to those files  it seems to be a toss up between revert and rebase  and there are no straightforward examples  and the docs assume I know more than I do   So here is a simplified version of the question   Given the following scenario  how do I remove commit 2     mkdir git revert test  amp  amp  cd git revert test    git init Initialized empty Git repository in  Users josh deleteme git revert test  git     echo  line 1   gt  myfile    git add -A    git commit -m  commit 1   master  root-commit  8230fa3  commit 1  1 files changed  1 insertions     0 deletions -   create mode 100644 myfile    echo  line 2   gt  gt  myfile    git commit -am  commit 2   master 342f9bb  commit 2  1 files changed  1 insertions     0 deletions -     echo  line 3   gt  gt  myfile    git commit -am  commit 3   master 1bcb872  commit 3  1 files changed  1 insertions     0 deletions -    The expected result is    cat myfile line 1 line 3   Here is an example of how I have been trying to revert    git revert 342f9bb Automatic revert failed   After resolving the conflicts  mark the corrected paths with  git add  lt paths gt   or  git rm  lt paths gt   and commit the result

User · Answer

Your choice is between

keeping the error and introducing a fix and
removing the error and changing the history.

You should choose (1) if the erroneous change has been picked up by anybody else and (2) if the error is limited to a private un-pushed branch.

Git revert is an automated tool to do (1), it creates a new commit undoing some previous commit. You'll see the error and removal in the project history but people who pull from your repository won't run into problems when they update. It's not working in an automated manner in your example so you need to edit 'myfile' (to remove line 2), do git add myfile and git commit to deal with the conflict. You will then end up with four commits in your history, with commit 4 reverting commit 2.

If nobody cares that your history changes, you can rewrite it and remove commit 2 (choice 2). The easy way to do this is to use git rebase -i 8230fa3. This will drop you into an editor and you can choose not to include the erroneous commit by removing the commit (and keeping "pick" next to the other commit messages. Do read up on the consequences of doing this.

User · Answer

Approch 1  First get the commit hash ex 1406cd61  that you need to revert  simple fix will be below command     git revert 1406cd61   if you have commit more changes related to 1406cd61 files after 1406cd61 commit  Above simple command will not work  Then you have to do the below steps  which is cherry picking   Approch 2  Please follow below squesnce of actions  Since we are using --force you need to have admin rights over the git repo to do this   Step 1  Find the commit before the commit you want to remove git log  Step 2  Checkout that commit git checkout  lt commit hash gt   Step 3  Make a new branch using your current checkout commit git checkout -b  lt new branch gt   Step 4  Now you need to add the commit after the removed commit git cherry-pick  lt commit hash gt   Step 5  Now repeat Step 4 for all other commits you want to keep   Step 6  Once all commits have been added to your new branch and have been commited  Check that everything is in the correct state and working as intended  Double check everything has been commited  git status  Step 7  Switch to your broken branch git checkout  lt broken branch gt   Step 8  Now perform a hard reset on the broken branch to the commit prior to the one your want to remove git reset --hard  lt commit hash gt   Step 9  Merge your fixed branch into this branch git merge  lt branch name gt   Step 10  Push the merged changes back to origin  WARNING  This will overwrite the remote repo  git push --force origin  lt branch name gt   You can do the process without creating a new branch by replacing Step 2  amp  3 with Step 8 then not carry out Step 7  amp  9

User · Answer

So it sounds like the bad commit was incorporated in a merge commit at some point  Has your merge commit been pulled yet  If yes  then you ll want to use git revert  you ll have to grit your teeth and work through the conflicts  If no  then you could conceivably either rebase or revert  but you can do so before the merge commit  then redo the merge   There s not much help we can give you for the first case  really  After trying the revert  and finding that the automatic one failed  you have to examine the conflicts and fix them appropriately  This is exactly the same process as fixing merge conflicts  you can use git status to see where the conflicts are  edit the unmerged files  find the conflicted hunks  figure out how to resolve them  add the conflicted files  and finally commit  If you use git commit by itself  no -m  lt message gt    the message that pops up in your editor should be the template message created by git revert  you can add a note about how you fixed the conflicts  then save and quit to commit   For the second case  fixing the problem before your merge  there are two subcases  depending on whether you ve done more work since the merge  If you haven t  you can simply git reset --hard HEAD  to knock off the merge  do the revert  then redo the merge  But I m guessing you have  So  you ll end up doing something like this    create a temporary branch just before the merge  and check it out do the revert  or use git rebase -i  lt something before the bad commit gt   lt temporary branch gt  to remove the bad commit  redo the merge rebase your subsequent work back on  git rebase --onto  lt temporary branch gt   lt old merge commit gt   lt real branch gt  remove the temporary branch

User · Answer

You can remove unwanted commits with git rebase  Say you included some commits from a coworker s topic branch into your topic branch  but later decide you don t want those commits   git checkout -b tmp-branch my-topic-branch    Use a temporary branch to be safe  git rebase -i master    Interactively rebase against master branch    At this point your text editor will open the interactive rebase view  For example     Remove the commits you don t want by deleting their lines Save and quit   If the rebase wasn t successful  delete the temporary branch and try another strategy  Otherwise continue with the following instructions   git checkout my-topic-branch git reset --hard tmp-branch    Overwrite your topic branch with the temp branch  git branch -d tmp-branch    Delete the temporary branch    If you re pushing your topic branch to a remote  you may need to force push since the commit history has changed  If others are working on the same branch  give them a heads up

User · Answer

Here is an easy solution   git rebase -i HEAD x    Note  x is the number of commits   upon executing notepad file will open  Enter drop besides your commit  If you don   t know Vim  just click on each word pick that you want to edit and then hit the  I  key  for insert mode   Once you   re done typing hit the  esc  key to exit insert mode     and that s it  you are done    Just sync the git dashboard and the changes will be pushed to remote    If the commit you drop was already on the remote  you will have to force push  Since --force is considered  harmful  use git  push --force-with-lease

User · Answer

The algorithm that Git uses when calculating diff s to be reverted requires that   the lines being reverted are not modified by any later commits  that there not be any other  adjacent  commits later in the history    The definition of  adjacent  is based on the default number of lines from a context diff  which is 3   So if  myfile  was constructed like this     cat  gt myfile  lt  lt EOF line 1 junk junk junk junk line 2 junk junk junk junk line 3 EOF   git add myfile   git commit -m  initial check-in   1 files changed  11 insertions     0 deletions -   create mode 100644 myfile    perl -p -i -e  s line 2 this is the second line    myfile   git commit -am  changed line 2 to second line   master d6cbb19  changed line 2  1 files changed  1 insertions     1 deletions -     perl -p -i -e  s line 3 this is the third line    myfile   git commit -am  changed line 3 to third line   master dd054fe  changed line 3  1 files changed  1 insertions     1 deletions -     git revert d6cbb19 Finished one revert   master 2db5c47  Revert  changed line 2   1 files changed  1 insertions     1 deletions -    Then it all works as expected   The second answer was very interesting   There is a feature which has not yet been officially released  though it is available in Git v1 7 2-rc2  called Revert Strategy   You can invoke git like this      git revert --strategy resolve  lt commit    and it should do a better job figuring out what you meant   I do not know what the list of available strategies is  nor do I know the definition of any strategy

User · Answer

So you did some work and pushed it  lets call them commits A and B  Your coworker did some work as well  commits C And D  You merged your coworkers work into yours  merge commit E   then continued working  committed that  too  commit F   and discovered that your coworker changed some things he shouldn t have   So your commit history looks like this   A -- B -- C -- D -- D  -- E -- F   You really want to get rid of C  D  and D   Since you say you merged your coworkers work into yours  these commits already  out there   so removing the commits using e g  git rebase is a no-no  Believe me  I ve tried   Now  I see two ways out    if you haven t pushed E and F to your coworker or anyone else  typically your  origin  server  yet  you could still remove those from the history for the time being  This is your work that you want to save  This can be done with a   git reset D     replace D  with the actual commit hash that you can obtain from a git log  At this point  commits E and F are gone and the changes are uncommitted changes in your local workspace again  At this point I would move them to a branch or turn them into a patch and save it for later  Now  revert your coworker s work  either automatically with a git revert or manually  When you ve done that  replay your work on top of that  You may have merge conflicts  but at least they ll be in the code you wrote  instead of your coworker s code  If you ve already pushed the work you did after your coworker s commits  you can still try and get a  reverse patch  either manually or using git revert  but since your work is  in the way   so to speak you ll probably get more merge conflicts and more confusing ones  Looks like that s what you ended up in

User · Answer

There are four ways of doing so    Clean way  reverting but keep in log the revert   git revert --strategy resolve  lt commit gt   Harsh way  remove altogether only the last commit   git reset --soft  HEAD      Note  Avoid git reset --hard as it will also discard all changes in files since the last commit  If --soft does not work  rather try --mixed or --keep    Rebase  show the log of the last 5 commits and delete the lines you don t want  or reorder  or squash multiple commits in one  or do anything else you want  this is a very versatile tool    git rebase -i HEAD 5    And if a mistake is made   git rebase --abort    Quick rebase  remove only a specific commit using its id   git rebase --onto commit-id  commit-id  Alternatives  you could also try   git cherry-pick commit-id  Yet another alternative   git revert --no-commit  As a last resort  if you need full freedom of history editing  eg  because git don t allow you to edit what you want to   you can use this very fast open source application  reposurgeon    Note  of course  all these changes are done locally  you should git push afterwards to apply the changes to the remote  And in case your repo doesn t want to remove the commit   no fast-forward allowed   which happens when you want to remove a commit you already pushed   you can use git push -f to force push the changes   Note2  if working on a branch and you need to force push  you should absolutely avoid git push --force because this may overwrite other branches  if you have made changes in them  even if your current checkout is on another branch   Prefer to always specify the remote branch when you force push  git push --force origin your branch

User · Answer

i would see a very simple way git reset --hard HEAD  lt YOUR COMMIT ID gt  and then reset remote branch git push origin -f

User · Answer

git revert --strategy resolve  if commit is a merge  use git revert --strategy resolve -m 1

User · Answer

From other answers here  I was kind of confused with how git rebase -i could be used to remove a commit  so I hope it s OK to jot down my test case here  very similar to the OP    Here is a bash script that you can paste in to create a test repository in the  tmp folder   set -x  rm -rf  tmp myrepo  cd  tmp  mkdir myrepo git cd myrepo git git init git config user name me git config user email me myself com  mkdir folder echo aaaa  gt  gt  folder file txt git add folder file txt git commit -m  1st git commit   echo bbbb  gt  gt  folder file txt git add folder file txt git commit -m  2nd git commit   echo cccc  gt  gt  folder file txt git add folder file txt git commit -m  3rd git commit   echo dddd  gt  gt  folder file txt git add folder file txt git commit -m  4th git commit   echo eeee  gt  gt  folder file txt git add folder file txt git commit -m  5th git commit    At this point  we have a file txt with these contents   aaaa bbbb cccc dddd eeee   At this point  HEAD is at the 5th commit  HEAD 1 would be the 4th - and HEAD 4 would be the 1st commit  so HEAD 5 wouldn t exist   Let s say we want to remove the 3rd commit - we can issue this command in the myrepo git directory   git rebase -i HEAD 4    Note that git rebase -i HEAD 5 results with  fatal  Needed a single revision  invalid upstream HEAD 5    A text editor  see screenshot in  Dennis  answer  will open with these contents   pick 5978582 2nd git commit pick 448c212 3rd git commit pick b50213c 4th git commit pick a9c8fa1 5th git commit    Rebase b916e7f  a9c8fa1 onto b916e7f         So we get all commits since  but not including  our requested HEAD 4  Delete the line pick 448c212 3rd git commit and save the file  you ll get this response from git rebase   error  could not apply b50213c    4th git commit  When you have resolved this problem run  git rebase --continue   If you would prefer to skip this patch  instead run  git rebase --skip   To check out the original branch and stop rebasing run  git rebase --abort   Could not apply b50213c    4th git commit   At this point open myrepo git folder file txt in a text editor  you ll see it has been modified   aaaa bbbb  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  HEAD         cccc dddd  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  b50213c    4th git commit   Basically  git sees that when HEAD got to 2nd commit  there was content of aaaa   bbbb  and then it has a patch of added cccc dddd which it doesn t know how to append to the existing content   So here git cannot decide for you - it is you who has to make a decision  by removing the 3rd commit  you either keep the changes introduced by it  here  the line cccc  -- or you don t  If you don t  simply remove the extra lines - including the cccc - in folder file txt using a text editor  so it looks like this   aaaa bbbb dddd       and then save folder file txt  Now you can issue the following commands in myrepo git directory     nano folder file txt    text editor - edit  save   git rebase --continue folder file txt  needs merge You must edit all merge conflicts and then mark them as resolved using git add   Ah - so in order to mark that we ve solved the conflict  we must git add the folder file txt  before doing git rebase --continue     git add folder file txt   git rebase --continue   Here a text editor opens again  showing the line 4th git commit - here we have a chance to change the commit message  which in this case could be meaningfully changed to 4th  and removed 3rd  commit or similar   Let s say you don t want to - so just exit the text editor without saving  once you do that  you ll get     git rebase --continue  detached HEAD b8275fc  4th git commit  1 file changed  1 insertion    Successfully rebased and updated refs heads master    At this point  now you have a history like this  which you could also inspect with say gitk   or other tools  of the contents of folder file txt  with  apparently  unchanged timestamps of the original commits    1st git commit      aaaa ---------------------------------------------- 2nd git commit      aaaa                     bbbb ---------------------------------------------- 4th git commit      aaaa                     bbbb                     dddd ---------------------------------------------- 5th git commit      aaaa                     bbbb                     dddd                     eeee   And if previously  we decided to keep the line cccc  the contents of the 3rd git commit that we removed   we would have had   1st git commit      aaaa ---------------------------------------------- 2nd git commit      aaaa                     bbbb ---------------------------------------------- 4th git commit      aaaa                     bbbb                     cccc                     dddd ---------------------------------------------- 5th git commit      aaaa                     bbbb                     cccc                     dddd                     eeee   Well  this was the kind of reading I hoped I d have found  to start grokking how git rebase works in terms of deleting commits revisions  so hope it might help others too

[git] Remove specific commit

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