{"id":3646,"date":"2017-01-03T21:38:34","date_gmt":"2017-01-03T21:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/?p=3646"},"modified":"2017-10-19T03:25:17","modified_gmt":"2017-10-19T03:25:17","slug":"git-how-to-replace-your-master-branch-with-another-branch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/git-how-to-replace-your-master-branch-with-another-branch\/","title":{"rendered":"[GIT] How to replace the master branch with another branch."},"content":{"rendered":"

TL;DR;
\ngit checkout master
\ngit reset --hard fixed-master-branch
\ngit push origin master -f<\/code><\/p>\n

Sometimes someone may pollute the ‘master’ branch and you may have noticed this only after you’ve fetched, rebased and pushed your commits.
\nSo your history may end up like this (I’ll use decimal numbers on the commit IDs for illustrative purposes only):<\/p>\n

commit: 87
\nAuthor: me
\nA good commit<\/p>\n

commit: 86
\nAuthor: other guy
\nMerge: that brought back a lot of crap because they probably used some GUI based git client and they did a git pull without your permission<\/p>\n

commit: 85
\nAuthor: other guy
\nAnother commit that shouldn't be here<\/p>\n

commit: 84
\nAuthor: me
\nAnother the last good commit<\/code><\/p>\n

Now, your master is all effed up and you’re about to have an anxiety attack. What you want is to have this in your git log.<\/p>\n

commit: 87
\nAuthor: me
\nA good commit<\/p>\n

commit: 84
\nAuthor: me
\nAnother the last good commit<\/code><\/p>\n

To get back to this state is pretty easy:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Check out the last good commit<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    git checkout 84<\/code><\/p>\n

    Now you will be detached from master, let’s name this temporary branch ‘fixed-master-branch’<\/p>\n

    git checkout -b fixed-master-branch<\/code><\/p>\n

    Now the last commit you should see should be commit 84.<\/p>\n

    Let’s now bring our commit, and skip the 2 sucky commits<\/p>\n

    git cherry-pick 87<\/code><\/p>\n

    Now your ‘fixed-master-branch’ branch looks exactly how you want the master to look like.<\/p>\n

    But now, you want to replace the old master with the new one.<\/p>\n

    Go back to the broked master<\/p>\n

    git checkout master<\/code><\/p>\n

    And fix it, and fuck all that merge –strategy ours BS advice you will find on StackOverflow as it will leave the git log history really weird.<\/p>\n

    git reset --hard fixed-master-branch<\/code><\/p>\n

    Now when you look at your history, master will be the same as ‘fixed-master’, and to fix your remote repo, you will have to make a push –force and let everyone know that you did that because you needed to clean your repository’s history<\/p>\n

    git push origin master -f<\/code><\/p>\n

    You’re done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    TL;DR; git checkout master git reset –hard fixed-master-branch git push origin master -f Sometimes someone may pollute the ‘master’ branch and you may have noticed this only after you’ve fetched, rebased and pushed your commits. So your history may end up like this (I’ll use decimal numbers on the commit IDs for illustrative purposes only): […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[484,533,1563],"class_list":["post-3646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-code","tag-git","tag-howto","tag-replace-branch"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Unzf-WO","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3055,"url":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/my-git-cheat-sheet\/","url_meta":{"origin":3646,"position":0},"title":"My Git Cheat-sheet","author":"gubatron","date":"May 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't know if it's the crazy syntax, but for the life of me, I always need to come back to this cheat sheet, maybe you will too: GIT CHEATSHEET fetch remote branch. git fetch origin nameofbranch \"fetch\" downloads the changes of the remote branch but doesn't automatically merge them.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Code"","block_context":{"text":"Code","link":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/category\/code\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-01-02-at-4.40.11-PM.png?fit=1200%2C696&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-01-02-at-4.40.11-PM.png?fit=1200%2C696&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-01-02-at-4.40.11-PM.png?fit=1200%2C696&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-01-02-at-4.40.11-PM.png?fit=1200%2C696&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-01-02-at-4.40.11-PM.png?fit=1200%2C696&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3150,"url":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/how-to-add-an-existing-git-repository-to-github\/","url_meta":{"origin":3646,"position":1},"title":"How to add an existing GIT repository to github.","author":"gubatron","date":"August 31, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Most of the times, it makes more sense to start working on something that slowly transforms into the beginning of a project that deserves to be on github. 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