Git -- Rewrite entire history

Question

I want to do an explicitly bad thing. I have a project where I am the only developer and I want to put it on Github but it's littered with absolutely terrible commit message. I want to basically re-init the repo so that when I push it to the public repo it doesn't have my asinine comments.

I've considered just deleting the .git file(directory?) but that seems wrong, but of course what I am doing is also a terrible practice in and of itself so maybe that really is the bet route?

Is this question about *what* you should do, or *how* to do it (or both)? — stakx - no longer contributing, Aug 02 '14 at 22:34
If you want to preserve the existing commits, but reword the commit messages [Git: How to edit/reword a merge commit's message?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7279196/git-how-to-edit-reword-a-merge-commits-message) will show you how. — infused, Aug 02 '14 at 22:48

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 03 '14 at 04:09

An interactive rebasde would allow you to review each commit message and change the ones you want:

git rebase --root -i

Or, as suggested, you can simply create a new repo and, using the --work-tree option, add everything from your old repo:

git init newrepo
cd newrepo
git --work-tree=/path/to/old/repo add .
git commit -m "Import old repo"
git push -u origin master

Git -- Rewrite entire history

1 Answers1