Question

I want to revert back to a specific commit ID. Restore a file I “git rm”-ed. Blow away all commits made since then. And then commit that repo. How would I do this?

Answer 1

$ git reset --hard <commit ID>    # Will reset to a specific commit
$ git push -f <remote>            # Push branch into remote, with force

Note that anyone who has cloned your repo may experience minor problems if they simply pull in your changes (since you forced the branch backwards in the commit history); they should do this to get your changes:

$ git fetch <remote>
$ git reset --hard <remote>/<branch>

Note that this will also blow away any of their changes in the current branch. However, if they have any branches made from their current branch, those branches will still have the commits you “blew away”.