COMPUTER SCIENCE
Deleting past GitHub commits



SHARATH PAI
30 DEC 2023 · 1 MIN READ

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Sometimes we might have a lot of commits in a particular GitHub repository and it looks kinda annnoying. In this case we might look to delete all the commits and start fresh with 0 commits. Here are the commands to do so and you can use the command prompt or VSCode or any other IDE's terminal for the same.


Navigating to the current working directory of the project

cd "directory-path"

Creating a new branch

git checkout --orphan new_branch

Adding files into the repository

git add .

Commit message

git commit -m "first commit"

Deleting the main branch

git branch -D main

Renaming the new branch as the original branch

git branch -m main

Pushing the changes

git push -f origin main


Refresh the repository page and there you go. Now you have only 1 commit. Whenever you wish to delete commits further, you can follow same steps as above for all repositories. Remember, it only deletes the commits of a particular repository but while going through GitHub commit stats, no changes will be reflected.

I also created a blog on how to link your project file to a GitHub repository. Navigate to the "Pushing the code to GitHub" section of the below link to check the required commands.

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