Important considerations#

Before proceeding with this action, it is important to understand:

1. You will loose your commit history.

2. Your team members will be required to reset remote branch tracking to continue working on your project.

   git fetch origin
   git reset --hard origin/master
   

Once you have understood the consequences of this action, it will probably be in your best interests to:

1. Create a backup of your repository.
2. Notify your team members of the intended action.
3. Plan for the action when at a time when it is less disruptive to teammates.
4. Record any important information such as important commit messages, versions or branches.

Once you have gone through these points, and are comfortable with the decision you can proceed.

Method 1: Using an orphan branch#

The easiest approach, is to use an orphaned branch. An orphan branch does not keep parent branch commit history, Once the orphaned branch has been created, the original branch can be deleted. The orphaned branch can then be renamed to match the parent branch name.

Easy right ?

# create a new orphaned branch
git checkout --orphan new_master

# add all files to git staging area
git add .

# create you intended first commit for the fresh branch
git commit -m "As fresh as a cucumber"

# Delete the parent branch
git branch -D master

# Rename the current orphan branch to original parent branch name
git branch -m master

Once this is done, you can push your changes to the remote repository.

NOTE

You will have to force push the local changes to the remote repository. This will overwrite any changes made on the remote repository prior to this action. This is why it is very important to communicate with other collaborators working on your project.

# push changes to remote repository
git push -f origin master

Once you have pushed the changes to the remote repository, all teammates that were working on your project before the action will be required to reset their working directories and staging area. important considerations

Method 2: Deleting .git and remote repository#

Another alternative is to clone the remote repository to your local environment.
Once cloned, delete the .git folder in your local copy. This will delete project tracking in your local copy.

You can then delete the project in your git server and create a new fresh project.

You can then go ahead and initialize a new repository in your working copy, and then add the new remote project. Go ahead to make your first commit and push to the new remote project.

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# initialiaze a new repository after deleting .git folder
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git init
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# add the remote project to the repository
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git remote add origin [email protected]:myuser/mynewproject.git
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# make your first commit to be pushed to the remote repository
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git add .
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git commit -m "Initial commit"
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# push the new fresh changes
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git push -u origin master