[git] Delete commits from a branch in Git

The mistake:

I git rebase -i --root'ed my branch, ignorantly thinking I could reword the first commit differing from the master (the GitHub for Windows default view is the comparison to master, hiding it's entirety).

I grew a Silicon Valley beard while 900+ commits loaded themselves into Sublime. Exiting with no changes, I charged my battery then proceeded to shave, as all 900+ individual commits nonchalantly rebased - resetting their commit times to now.

Determined to beat Git and preserve the original times, I deleted this local repository and re-cloned from the remote.

Now it had re-added a most recent unneeded commit to master I wished to remove, so proceeded like so.

Exhausting the options:

I didn't wish to git revert - it would create an additional commit, giving Git the upper hand.

git reset --hard HEAD did nothing, after checking the reflog, the last and only HEAD was the clone - Git wins.

To get the most recent SHA, I checked the remote repository on github.com - minor win.

After thinking git reset --hard <SHA> had worked, I updated another branch to master and 1... 2... poof! the commit was back - Git wins.

Checking back out to master, time to try git rebase -i <SHA>, then remove the line... to no avail, sad to say. "If you remove a line here THAT COMMIT WILL BE LOST". Ah...glossed over new feature troll the n00b in the 2.8.3 release notes.

The solution:

git rebase -i <SHA> then d, drop = remove commit.

To verify, I checked out to another branch, and voila - no hiding commit to fetch/pull from the master.

https://twitter.com/holman/status/706006896273063936

Good day to you.

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