How to reset the first commit in Git?
When we want to change the initial commit on the main (or master) branch, we cannot use interactive rebasing and resetting. Both of them have security mechanisms to prevent this action. Instead, we either have to change our main (using —-orphan
) or delete the branch while we're on it.
Don't use
rm -rf .git
. This command deletes everything related to Git in the repository. We will lose all the branches and the commits.
Let's change the main
branch.
First, we need to rename the main
branch (Before running this command, we assume a branch named old_main
doesn't exist.).
git branch -m main old_main
-m
or --move
is used to rename/move the branch and its reflog. This moves everything (all the commits and history) from the main
branch to the old_main
branch. Now our branch looks like this: old_main:main
.
Next, we need to create an orphan branch from the current head.
git checkout --orphan main
--orphan
creates a new branch without a root so that the newly created branch doesn't have a history and a parent. The new branch is totally disconnected from all other branches and commits. But it still has all the files from the old_main
, because we created a new branch while we were in the old_main
branch.
The last thing is deleting the old_main
since we don't need it anymore. (We can keep it to preserve history if we want to.)
git branch -D old_main
Now we have the latest changes, and we are in a brand new main
branch. But there is another way to do this with a single command. Before running the following command, we need to make sure we're on the main
branch.
git update-ref -d HEAD
This command deletes the branch we are in. If we are in main
, this command will delete the main
branch, and all the commits.