How can I overwrite, not merge, one remote branch into another branch?

Question

I have two branches. Staging and Beta. Staging has code in it ( including files ), that I do not want at all. How can I make Beta completely overwrite Staging, so that none of t

Answer 1

If you don't care about the old history of staging, you can just recreate it:

git checkout beta
git branch -f staging

If you do care about the old history of staging, then things get more fun:

git checkout staging        # First, merge beta into staging so we have
git merge -s theirs beta    # a merge commit to work with.

git checkout beta           # Then, flip back to beta's version of the files

git reset --soft staging    # Then we go back to the merge commit SHA, but keep 
                            # the actual files and index as they were in beta

git commit --amend          # Finally, update the merge commit to match the
                            # files and index as they were in beta.