How to remove commits from a pull request

Question

I did a pull request but after that I made some commits to the project locally which ended polluting my pull request, I tried to remove it but without any luck.

I found some similar questions on StackOverflow but I can't apply what's in there. It's my first pull request on GitHub so it's kinda strange to me how all of this works.

The highlighted commit is the one I need to keep and remove all the other stuff. It becomes the fourth commit in the history because I make some merge stuff.

my git log

Can someone please explain what's going on and how to fix this problem?

You need to [rebase](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Branching-Rebasing), and only "pick" the "added from github" commit (i.e. comment out the lines for every other commit) — scrowler, Mar 23 '16 at 02:44
rebase what branch onto what branch can you please add more explanation. — humazed, Mar 23 '16 at 02:50
`what branch` = the branch you're working on, `onto what branch` = the branch you're pull requesting into — scrowler, Mar 23 '16 at 02:50
I explained what @Robbie Averill hinted in my answer. It's strange that nobody wrote an answer explaining this until now. — Ferit, Jul 20 '18 at 15:32
related: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62951901/is-it-possible-to-remove-a-modified-file-from-a-github-pull-request-via-the-gith — gman, Jul 17 '20 at 12:52

Ferit · Answer 1 · 2018-09-06T06:12:59.250

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People wouldn't like to see a wrong commit and a revert commit to undo changes of the wrong commit. This pollutes commit history.

Here is a simple way for removing the wrong commit instead of undoing changes with a revert commit.

git checkout my-pull-request-branch
git rebase -i HEAD~n // where n is the number of last commits you want to include in interactive rebase.
Replace pick with drop for commits you want to discard.
Save and exit.
git push --force

edited Sep 06 '18 at 06:12

answered Jul 18 '18 at 11:14

Ferit

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this worked for me like a charm. I had bunch of commits which shouldnt have been in the PR. I just interactive rebased it, dropped those commits and pushed them back – FullStackEngineer Jul 18 '18 at 15:39
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You should sync with remote master before starting a pr anyway, no? – Ferit Jul 20 '18 at 12:39
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To push I had to do: `git push origin HEAD:myBranch --force`. But otherwise great and helpful. – ScottyBlades Sep 28 '18 at 19:33
@ScottyBlades I omitted that part intentionally as it's out of scope. If you didn't set the tracking branch you either need to set it or, like you did, push explicitly. – Ferit Sep 28 '18 at 20:10
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This is also useful when you want to fix an open PR in GitHub, you just need to be able to do a forced push – Vladimir Hidalgo Mar 29 '19 at 02:09
Worked like a charm. Also it is better if you can cherry-pick the commit that you want to separate from the PR to another branch. – Shan Chathusanda Jayathilaka Jan 07 '20 at 10:02
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What do you mean by "Replace `pick` with `drop` for commits you want to discard."? – jorijnsmit Feb 29 '20 at 08:02
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@jorijnsmit they mean after running `git rebase -i HEAD~`, at the top of the file there will `` lines of commits, with each line containing the text `pick `. The commits default to `pick`, so for every commit you want to drop, change the text `pick` to `drop` – Slim Sep 07 '20 at 19:49
Silly question - is the "~" a part of the git rebase -i HEAD~n command? – Doug Kimzey Oct 22 '20 at 14:45
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Not at all. Yeah, it is a part of the command. @DougKimzey – Ferit Oct 24 '20 at 17:11

score 167 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:03

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You have several techniques to do it.

This post - read the part about the revert will explain in details what we want to do and how to do it.

Here is the most simple solution to your problem:

# Checkout the desired branch
git checkout <branch>

# Undo the desired commit
git revert <commit>

# Update the remote with the undo of the code
git push origin <branch>

The revert command will create a new commit with the undo of the original commit.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:03

Community

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answered Mar 23 '16 at 06:05

CodeWizard

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Does it work even when we forked the project from some another person and wanna remove some comments in pull request? – Dr.jacky Sep 16 '17 at 06:39
to revert all commit from pull request you only need Merge pull request commit id. # Undo the desired commits from pull request `git revert -m 1` – Techie Nov 03 '21 at 07:09
You are right @Deeppak, just clarifying that the -m stands for the parent of the merge so you might need to use `-m n` instead of 1 – CodeWizard Nov 03 '21 at 07:32
Worked beautifully for me, easy and painless. – Artexias Apr 28 '22 at 14:08

score 11 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 28 '19 at 14:47

If you're removing a commit and don't want to keep its changes @ferit has a good solution.

If you want to add that commit to the current branch, but doesn't make sense to be part of the current pr, you can do the following instead:

use git rebase -i HEAD~n
Swap the commit you want to remove to the bottom (most recent) position
Save and exit
use git reset HEAD^ --soft to uncommit the changes and get them back in a staged state.
use git push --force to update the remote branch without your removed commit.

Now you'll have removed the commit from your remote, but will still have the changes locally.

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Aug 27 '18 at 14:44

So do the following ,

Lets say your branch name is my_branch and this has the extra commits.

git checkout -b my_branch_with_extra_commits (Keeping this branch saved under a different name)
gitk (Opens git console)
Look for the commit you want to keep. Copy the SHA of that commit to a notepad.
git checkout my_branch
gitk (This will open the git console )
Right click on the commit you want to revert to (State before your changes) and click on "reset branch to here"
Do a git pull --rebase origin branch_name_to _merge_to
git cherry-pick <SHA you copied in step 3. >

Now look at the local branch commit history and make sure everything looks good.

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 17 '20 at 12:29

This is what helped me:

Create a new branch with the existing one. Let's call the existing one branch_old and new as branch_new.
Reset branch_new to a stable state, when you did not have any problem commit at all. For example, to put it at your local master's level do the following:

git reset —hard master git push —force origin
cherry-pick the commits from branch_old into branch_new
git push

How to remove commits from a pull request

5 Answers5

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