Make the current commit the only (initial) commit in a Git repository?

Question

I currently have a local Git repository, which I push to a Github repository.

The local repository has ~10 commits, and the Github repository is a synchronized duplicate of this.

What I'd like to do is remove ALL the version history from the local Git repository, so the current contents of the repository appear as the only commit (and therefore older versions of files within the repository are not stored).

I'd then like to push these changes to Github.

I have investigated Git rebase, but this appears to be more suited to removing specific versions. Another potential solution is to delete the local repo, and create a new one - through this would probably create a lot of work!

ETO: There are specific directories/files that are untracked - if possible I would like to maintain the untracking of these files.

Answer 1

Here I am solving this question with a brute-force approach.

Note: This approach will not work if your repository has submodules. For repository having submodules, you should use interactive rebase.

Let’s see the brute-force approach

Step1: Remove all history(make sure you have the backup) using:

cat .git/config  # note <github-url>

rm -rf .git

Step2: Reconstruct the git repo with the current content:

git init

git add .

git commit -m "Initial commit"

Step3: Push the commit to github

git remote add origin <github-url>

git push -u --force origin master

Thus, you can make current commit to the only commit in a git repository.