Git, How to reset origin/master to a commit?

The solution found here helped us to update master to a previous commit that had already been pushed:

git checkout master
git reset --hard e3f1e37
git push --force origin e3f1e37:master

The key difference from the accepted answer is the commit hash "e3f1e37:" before master in the push command.


origin/xxx branches are always pointer to a remote. You cannot check them out as they're not pointer to your local repository (you only checkout the commit. That's why you won't see the name written in the command line interface branch marker, only the commit hash).

What you need to do to update the remote is to force push your local changes to master:

git checkout master
git reset --hard e3f1e37
git push --force origin master
# Then to prove it (it won't print any diff)
git diff master..origin/master

Assuming that your branch is called master both here and remotely, and that your remote is called origin you could do:

git reset --hard <commit-hash>
git push -f origin master

However, you should avoid doing this if anyone else is working with your remote repository and has pulled your changes. In that case, it would be better to revert the commits that you don't want, then push as normal.