title: git revert remote to a particular commit with a merge doesn't work with -m
body: <p>I'm trying to revert back our remote repo to a previous commit. The tree is as shown below:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/8MMI3.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/8MMI3.jpg" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p>The idea is that we want to go back to that commit without requiring anyone who's pulled from master branch to have to deal with the problems that would arise from resetting back to commit <code>2dda031</code>. So I'm using <code>git revert</code> instead.</p>
  
  <p>I'm trying to do this by using <code>git revert --no-commit 2dda031..HEAD</code></p>
  
  <p>However, I get this error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>error: commit d064f7c3b04a2bda30c43a32afac822c6af633c0 is a merge but no -m  option was given. 
  fatal: revert failed
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This is expected as <code>d064f7c</code> is a merge (so is <code>47d4161</code>). So as suggested <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5970889/why-does-git-revert-complain-about-a-missing-m-option">here</a> I do:</p>
  
  <pre><code>git revert --abort
  git revert --no-commit -m 1 2dda031..HEAD
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I then get the error message:</p>
  
  <pre><code>error: mainline was specified but commit cb420e0 is not a merge.
  fatal: revert failed
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So I just feel like I'm going in cycles. Can someone show me the correct way of reverting back to that commit (while restoring the history)?</p>