I am maintainer of a CPAN distribution whose most recent official release is version 2.12.

Since 2.12 was published, we have made the following development releases:

2.12_001
2.12_002
2.12_003
2.12_004
[download]

In the git repository, we have tags for:

2.12_002
2.12_003
2.12_004
[download]

(Somehow 2.12_001 was overlooked or has not yet been set.)

I now realize that much of the code (mostly tests, but some source) added in 2.12_003 and 2.12_004 is conceptually flawed. For other developers and myself to treat 2.12_004 as the starting point for future development would not be fruitful.

What I would like to do is to go back to 2.12_002 and start development anew from there -- but without pretending that 2.12_003 and 2.12_004 were never released. I would like 2.12_005 to be equivalent to 2.12_002 but with only very safe, minor touchups.

Would the following be the recommended sequence of git commands?

$ git checkout master
$ git checkout -b start-anew
$ git reset --soft 2.12_002
$ git commit -m "Rewind to tag 2.12_002"
# hack, hack, hack
$ git add ...
$ git commit -m "Slight touchups to what was 2.12_002"
$ git checkout master
$ git merge start-anew
$ git tag "2.12_005"
[download]

Thank you very much.