How do you remove a specific revision in the git history

Question

Suppose your git history looks like this   1 2 3 4 5  1   5 are separate revisions  You need to remove 3 while still keeping 1  2  4 and 5  How can this be done   Is there an efficient method when there are hundreds of revisions after the one to be deleted

User · Accepted Answer

To combine revision 3 and 4 into a single revision, you can use git rebase. If you want to remove the changes in revision 3, you need to use the edit command in the interactive rebase mode. If you want to combine the changes into a single revision, use squash.

I have successfully used this squash technique, but have never needed to remove a revision before. The git-rebase documentation under "Splitting commits" should hopefully give you enough of an idea to figure it out. (Or someone else might know).

From the git documentation:

Start it with the oldest commit you want to retain as-is:

git rebase -i <after-this-commit>

An editor will be fired up with all the commits in your current branch (ignoring merge commits), which come after the given commit. You can reorder the commits in this list to your heart's content, and you can remove them. The list looks more or less like this:
pick deadbee The oneline of this commit
pick fa1afe1 The oneline of the next commit
...
The oneline descriptions are purely for your pleasure; git-rebase will not look at them but at the commit names ("deadbee" and "fa1afe1" in this example), so do not delete or edit the names.

By replacing the command "pick" with the command "edit", you can tell git-rebase to stop after applying that commit, so that you can edit the files and/or the commit message, amend the commit, and continue rebasing.

If you want to fold two or more commits into one, replace the command "pick" with "squash" for the second and subsequent commit. If the commits had different authors, it will attribute the squashed commit to the author of the first commit.

User · Answer

I also landed in a similar situation  Use interactive rebase using the command below and while selecting  drop 3rd commit   git rebase -i remote branch

User · Answer

As noted before git-rebase 1  is your friend  Assuming the commits are in your master branch  you would do   git rebase --onto master 3 master 2 master   Before   1---2---3---4---5  master   After   1---2---4 ---5  master   From git-rebase 1       A range of commits could also be   removed with rebase  If we have the   following situation   E---F---G---H---I---J  topicA       then the command  git rebase --onto topicA 5 topicA 3 topicA       would result in the removal of   commits F and G   E---H ---I ---J   topicA       This is useful if F and G were flawed in some   way  or should not be part of topicA    Note that the argument to --onto and   the  parameter can be any   valid commit-ish

User · Answer

All the answers so far don t address the trailing concern      Is there an efficient method when there are hundreds of revisions   after the one to be deleted    The steps follow  but for reference  let s assume the following history    master  - gt   hundreds-of-commits-including-merges  - gt   C  - gt   R  - gt   B    C    commit just following the commit to be removed  clean   R    The commit to be removed  B    commit just preceding the commit to be removed  base   Because of the  hundreds of revisions  constraint  I m assuming the following pre-conditions    there is some embarrassing commit that you wish never existed there are ZERO subsequent commits that actually depend on that embarassing commit  zero conflicts on revert  you don t care that you will be listed as the  Committer  of the hundreds of intervening commits   Author  will be preserved  you have never shared the repository   or you actually have enough influence over all the people who have ever cloned history with that commit in it to convince them to use your new history and you don t care about rewriting history    This is a pretty restrictive set of constraints  but there is an interesting answer that actually works in this corner case   Here are the steps    git branch base B git branch remove-me R git branch save git rebase --preserve-merges --onto base remove-me   If there are truly no conflicts  then this should proceed with no further interruptions   If there are conflicts  you can resolve them and rebase --continue or decide to just live with the embarrassment and rebase --abort   Now you should be on master that no longer has commit R in it   The save branch points to where you were before  in case you want to reconcile   How you want to arrange everyone else s transfer over to your new history is up to you   You will need to be acquainted with stash  reset --hard  and cherry-pick   And you can delete the base  remove-me  and save branches

User · Answer

Here is a way to remove non-interactively a specific  lt commit-id gt   knowing only the  lt commit-id gt  you would like to remove   git rebase --onto  lt commit-id gt    lt commit-id gt  HEAD

User · Answer

So here is the scenario that I faced  and how I solved it    branch-a    Hundreds of commits  - gt   R  - gt   I    here R is the commit that I needed to be removed  and I is a single commit that comes after R  I made a revert commit and squashed them together  git revert  commit id of R  git rebase -i HEAD 3   During the interactive rebase squash the last 2 commits

User · Answer

If all you want to do is remove the changes made in revision 3  you might want to use git revert   Git revert simply creates a new revision with changes that undo all of the changes in the revision you are reverting   What this means  is that you retain information about both the unwanted commit  and the commit that removes those changes   This is probably a lot more friendly if it s at all possible the someone has pulled from your repository in the mean time  since the revert is basically just a standard commit

User · Answer

Answers of rado and kareem do nothing for me  only message  Current branch  is up to date   appears   Possibly this happens because     symbol doesn t work in Windows console  However  according to this comment  replacing     by   1  solves the problem   git rebase --onto  lt commit-id gt    lt commit-id gt

User · Answer

Per this comment  and I checked that this is true   rado s answer is very close but leaves git in a detached head state  Instead  remove HEAD and use this to remove  lt commit-id gt  from the branch you re on   git rebase --onto  lt commit-id gt    lt commit-id gt

[git] How do you remove a specific revision in the git history?

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