gitignore after commit

Question

I have a git repository hosted on Github  After committing many files  I am realizing that I need to create  gitignore and exclude  exe   obj files   However  will it automatically remove these committed files from the repository  Is there any way to force that

User · Accepted Answer

No you cannot force a file that is already committed in the repo to be removed just because it is added to the .gitignore

You have to git rm --cached to remove the files that you don't want in the repo. ( --cached since you probably want to keep the local copy but remove from the repo. ) So if you want to remove all the exe's from your repo do

git rm --cached /\*.exe

(Note that the asterisk * is quoted from the shell - this lets git, and not the shell, expand the pathnames of files and subdirectories)

User · Answer

However  will it automatically remove these committed files from the repository    No  Even with an existing  gitignore you are able to stage  ignored  files with the -f  force  flag  If they files are already commited  they don t get removed automatically   git rm --cached path to ignored exe

User · Answer

If you have not pushed the changes already   git rm -r --cached   git add   git commit -m  clear git cache  git push

User · Answer

Even after you delete the file s  and then commit  you will still have those files in history  To delete those  consider using BFG Repo-Cleaner  It is an alternative to git-filter-branch

User · Answer

I had to remove  idea and target folders and after reading all comments this worked for me   git rm -r  idea git rm -r target git commit -m  removed  idea folder    and then push to master

User · Answer

However  will it automatically remove these committed files from the repository    No    The  best  recipe to do this is using git filter-branch as written about here    http   git-scm com book en Git-Internals-Maintenance-and-Data-Recovery Removing-Objects   The man page for git-filter-branch contains comprehensive examples   Note You ll be re-writing history  If you had published any revisions containing the accidentally added files  this could create trouble for users of those public branches  Inform them  or perhaps think about how badly you need to remove the files   Note In the presence of tags  always use the --tag-name-filter cat option to git filter-branch  It never hurts and will save you the head-ache when you realize later taht you needed it

[git] .gitignore after commit

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