How to remove files that are listed in the gitignore but still on the repository

Question

I have some files in my repository that should be ignored  i added them to the  gitignore but  of course  they are not removed from my repository   So my question is  is there a magic command or script using filter-branch that can rewrite my history and remove all these files easily  Or simply a command that will create a commit that will remove them

User · Answer

If you really want to prune your history of .gitignored files, first save .gitignore outside the repo, e.g. as /tmp/.gitignore, then run

git filter-branch --force --index-filter \
    "git ls-files -i -X /tmp/.gitignore | xargs -r git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch -rf" \
    --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all

Notes:

git filter-branch --index-filter runs in the .git directory I think, i.e. if you want to use a relative path you have to prepend one more ../ first. And apparently you cannot use ../.gitignore, the actual .gitignore file, that yields a "fatal: cannot use ../.gitignore as an exclude file" for some reason (maybe during a git filter-branch --index-filter the working directory is (considered) empty?)
I was hoping to use something like git ls-files -iX <(git show $(git hash-object -w .gitignore)) instead to avoid copying .gitignore somewhere else, but that alone already returns an empty string (whereas cat <(git show $(git hash-object -w .gitignore)) indeed prints .gitignore's contents as expected), so I cannot use <(git show $GITIGNORE_HASH) in git filter-branch...
If you actually only want to .gitignore-clean a specific branch, replace --all in the last line with its name. The --tag-name-filter cat might not work properly then, i.e. you'll probably not be able to directly transfer a single branch's tags properly

User · Answer

An easier way that works regardless of the OS is to do git rm -r --cached   git add   git commit -m  quot Drop files from  gitignore quot   You basically remove and re-add all files  but git add will ignore the ones in  gitignore  Using the --cached option will keep files in your filesystem  so you won t be removing files from your disk  Note  Some pointed out in the comments that you will lose the history of all your files  I tested this with git 2 27 0 on MacOS and it is not the case  If you want to check what is happening  check your git diff HEAD 1 before you push your commit

User · Answer

As the files in  gitignore are not being tracked  you can use the git clean command to recursively remove files that are not under version control   Use git clean -xdn to perform a dry run and see what will be removed  Then use git clean -xdf to execute it     Basically  git clean -h or man git-clean in unix  will give you help     Be aware that this command will also remove new files that are not in the staging area   Hope it helps

User · Answer

You can remove them from the repository manually    git rm --cached file1 file2 dir file3   Or  if you have a lot of files    git rm --cached  git ls-files -i --exclude-from  gitignore    But this doesn t seem to work in Git Bash on Windows  It produces an error message  The following works better   git ls-files -i --exclude-from  gitignore   xargs git rm --cached     Regarding rewriting the whole history without these files  I highly doubt there s an automatic way to do it  And we all know that rewriting the history is bad  don t we

User · Answer

I can t say it s an appropriate solution but you can try this  Steps  I am hoping that you have already cloned your repo  Now copy the file somewhere outside of your project  Add that filename with a location in gitigonre file  Remove that file from your local project  Push your code to remote origin  And now add that copied file into your project it ll be ignored   This is just a hack solution if you want to maintain the history and don t to create mass in it  If you don t want to use this solution please kindly ignore and try to avoid devote it  Because I am really trying to increase my score on this side

User · Answer

The git will ignore the files matched  gitignore pattern after you add it to  gitignore   But the files already existed in repository will be still in   use git rm files ignored  git commit -m  rm no use files  to delete ignored files

User · Answer

In linux you can use this commande    for exemple i want to delete    py   so my command should be        find   -name    py   -exec rm -f

User · Answer

I did a very straightforward solution by manipulating the output of the  gitignore statement with sed   cat  gitignore   sed         d    sed     s    d    sed  s   git rm -r      bash  Explanation    print the  gitignore file remove all comments from the print delete all empty lines add  git rm -r   to the start of the line execute every line

[git] How to remove files that are listed in the .gitignore but still on the repository?

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