Reset git repository to a new commit

Git is an awesome version control system, popularized by Github. Working on a big project, you might need to add (huge) binaries, or libraries, or even psds, videos… to your repository. We’ll not judge this method, it has its pros & cons. The fact is: if those big files change often, your repository will increase very quickly. And sometimes your own code versioning is not a big deal. It’s stable, and for newcomer it doesn’t need all the git history and its 4Go (yeah, I already experienced that). So let see how to reset your git repository to a new commit:

Firsty, save your local .git/config file somewhere on your disk. Then:

rm -rf .git
git init

Import and overwrite your previous .git/config file. Then:

git add .
git commit -m "Repository reset"
git push -f origin master

Et voilà!

A cool thing to notice is on Github and Bitbucket, you won’t lost data subscriptions, stars & forks.

Maybe you need a backup on a specific URL just in case…? Just create a new repository, and in your .git/config file change the url and push ;)