I noticed recently that the project files my text editors use (along with some other junk) got added the git repository for the project. Since they aren't actually part of the project, I'd like to remove them, but git rm doesnt remove the old versions from the repository, and I couldnt find anything else that looks promising.
- 5partial duplicate, definitely covered by previous questions: stackoverflow.com/questions/307828/… stackoverflow.com/questions/1216733/…Cascabel– Cascabel2010-08-11 13:25:24 +00:00Commented Aug 11, 2010 at 13:25
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3 Answers
The tool you want is git filter-branch. Its usage is described here, but basically:
$ git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -f my_file' HEAD will remove "my_file" from every commit.
Notice that this rewrites every commit, so if you push into a remote repository, you have to (a) force the update, and (b) everyone else who pulled from you will now have duplicate commits (since you rewrote the history), as described on the git rebase man page.
12 Comments
fnkr
I recommend to add
--prune-empty so any empty commits generated as a result will be removed too.
mipadi
@CodeMonkey: In that case, you'd use a longer, unique path.
alper
later should I do
git push --force ? @mipadi
mannyglover
@mipadi, what if I deleted these files locally, long ago? (and committed and pushed these deletions) How can I delete the files from the repository in this case?
vinicius gati
@alper
git pull origin master --allow-unrelated-histories |
This is what git filter-branch is for, but beware that your repo history will change, and the commit hashes will be different after history rewrite.
If you also want to free the space, I recommend that you use git forget-blob, because git filter-branch alone will not make git forget your file, as it may still be referenced by remotes, reflog, tags and such.
git forget-blob main.c.swp
You can get more information here
Comments
It's now recommended to use git-filter-repo instead. Running git-filter-branch actually prints:
WARNING: git-filter-branch has a glut of gotchas generating mangled history 
1 Comment
Ike348
What is the git-filter-repo command that answers the question?