My initial commit contained some log files. I've added *log
to my .gitignore
, and now I want to remove the log files from my repository.
git rm mylogfile.log
will remove a file from the repository, but will also remove it from the local file system.
How can I remove this file from the repo without deleting my local copy of the file?
This question is related to
git
repository
remote-server
delete-file
git-rm
Also, if you have commited sensitive data (e.g. a file containing passwords), you should completely delete it from the history of the repository. Here's a guide explaining how to do that: http://help.github.com/remove-sensitive-data/
This depends on what you mean by 'remove' from git. :)
You can unstage a file using git rm --cached see for more details. When you unstage something, it means that it is no longer tracked, but this does not remove the file from previous commits.
If you want to do more than unstage the file, for example to remove sensitive data from all previous commits you will want to look into filtering the branch using tools like the BFG Repo-Cleaner.
Above answers didn't work for me. I used filter-branch
to remove all committed files.
Remove a file from a git repository with:
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm file'
Remove a folder from a git repository with:
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -rf directory'
This removes the directory or file from all the commits.
You can specify a commit by using:
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -rf directory' HEAD
Or an range:
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -rf vendor/gems' t49dse..HEAD
To push everything to remote, you can do:
git push origin master --force
To remove an entire folder from the repo (like Resharper files), do this:
git rm -r --cached folderName
I had committed some resharper files, and did not want those to persist for other project users.
Note : this does not deal with history for sensitive information.
This process definitely takes some undertanding of what is going on with git. Over time, having gained that, I've learned to do processes such as:
.gitignore
to ignore them - in many cases such as yours, the parent directory, e.g. log/
will be the regex to use..gitignore
file change (not sure if push needed mind you, no harm if done).git remove --cached some_dir/
git add .
git commit -m"removal"
You can also remove files from the repository based on your .gitignore without deleting them from the local file system :
git rm --cached `git ls-files -i -X .gitignore`
Or, alternatively, on Windows Powershell:
git rm --cached $(git ls-files -i -X .gitignore)
Git lets you ignore those files by assuming they are unchanged. This is done by running the
git update-index --assume-unchanged path/to/file.txt
command. Once marking a file as such, git will completely ignore any changes on that file; they will not show up when running git status or git diff, nor will they ever be committed.
(From https://help.github.com/articles/ignoring-files)
Hence, not deleting it, but ignoring changes to it forever. I think this only works locally, so co-workers can still see changes to it unless they run the same command as above. (Still need to verify this though.)
Note: This isn't answering the question directly, but is based on follow up questions in the comments of the other answers.
As per my Answer here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6313126/how-to-remove-a-directory-in-my-github-repository
Steps to remove directory
git rm -r --cached File-or-FolderName
git commit -m "Removed folder from repository"
git push origin master
Steps to ignore that folder in next commits
To ignore that folder from next commits make one file in root named .gitignore and put that folders name into it. You can put as many as you want
.gitignore file will be look like this
/FolderName
A more generic solution:
Edit .gitignore
file.
echo mylogfile.log >> .gitignore
Remove all items from index.
git rm -r -f --cached .
Rebuild index.
git add .
Make new commit
git commit -m "Removed mylogfile.log"
If you want to just untrack a file and not delete from local and remote repo then use this command:
git update-index --assume-unchanged file_name_with_path
Source: Stackoverflow.com