Revert commits and commit them to a branch?

Question

I'm cloning a popular open source project into GitHub, and I only realized this after it was too late. I'm also trying to convert this project over to use Maven instead of Ant/Ivy for a build tool. I was able to convert the repository from SVN to Git via the aptly-named svn2git, then started making changes toward the Maven migration.

I failed to realize at the get-go that I needed to create a separate branch for my Maven migrations. Is there a way for me to take my revisions, remove them from master, and send them to a new branch?

Answer 1

This sounds really simple to fix assuming you made all your commits to master. Here's a high-level description of the steps (tailor commands to your specific repo).

• Make a new branch at your current HEAD (e.g. with git branch <newbranch>)

• Switch to the current master (git checkout master).

• Track down your original master HEAD commit and move there (e.g. git reset --hard HEAD~n).

• When pushing to a remote repository, use --force to foist the undoings onto the repository (for example: git push --force --all)