Re: How to remove a commit object?

["Klas Lindberg" <klas.lindberg@gmail.com>]

Repo size is a problem too, actually.

A solution to both problems seemed to be to use git-filter-branch to
create a new repo by filtering out all the unwanted files. The
astonishing result was that, for the subdirectory I tried it on, 90%
or so of the commits on that subdirectory just disappeared. It didn't
look right at all. Although I can't say for sure exactly what I did
with filter-branch, I would appreciate some guidance for using it. It
basically seemed to do exactly what I wanted (recreate the repo, minus
some explicit stuff, with history intact otherwise), except the result
looked crazy.

/Klas

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 4:02 PM, Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:
> "Klas Lindberg" <klas.lindberg@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> This doesn't seem to work for me. I will soon be in a situation where
>> I need to selectively delete commits in such a way that they become
>> completely irrecoverable. I.e. it is not enough to revert a commit.
>> The *original* commit must be removed. And of course, the repo history
>> is too complex to allow for rebasing followed by garbage collection or
>> something like that.
> [...]
>
>> Would it be feasible to write a tool that can selectively replace a
>> specific commit in the commit DAG, or would that automatically
>> invalidate every SHA key for every commit that follows the replaced
>> original?
>
> It would invalidate SHA1 for every commit after first rewritten.
> There are two tools which you can use to rewrite large parts of
> history automatically: git-filter-branch, and git-fast-export +
> git-fast-import.
>
> HTH
> --
> Jakub Narebski
> Poland
> ShadeHawk on #git
>