[git] Resync git repo with new .gitignore file

Is it possible to "refresh" a git repository after updating the gitignore file?

I just added more ignorations(?) to my gitignore and would like to remove stuff already in the repo matching the new file.

This question is related to git

The answer is


I know this is an old question, but gracchus's solution doesn't work if file names contain spaces. VonC's solution to file names with spaces is to not remove them utilizing --ignore-unmatch, then remove them manually, but this will not work well if there are a lot.

Here is a solution that utilizes bash arrays to capture all files.

# Build bash array of the file names
while read -r file; do 
    rmlist+=( "$file" )
done < <(git ls-files -i --exclude-standard)

git rm –-cached "${rmlist[@]}"

git commit -m 'ignore update'

I might misunderstand, but are you trying to delete files newly ignored or do you want to ignore new modifications to these files ? In this case, the thing is working.

If you want to delete ignored files previously commited, then use

git rm –cached `git ls-files -i –exclude-standard`
git commit -m 'clean up'