How do you fix a bad merge and replay your good commits onto a fixed merge

Question

I accidentally committed an unwanted file  filename orig while resolving a merge  to my repository several commits ago  without me noticing it until now  I want to completely delete the file from the repository history    Is it possible to rewrite the change history such that filename orig was never added to the repository in the first place

User · Answer

This is the best way  http   github com guides completely-remove-a-file-from-all-revisions   Just be sure to backup the copies of the files first   EDIT  The edit by Neon got unfortunately rejected during review  See Neons post below  it might contain useful information     E g  to remove all   gz files accidentally committed into git repository     du -sh  git    gt  e g  100M   git filter-branch --index-filter  git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch   gz  HEAD   git push origin master --force   rm -rf  git refs original    git reflog expire --expire now --all   git gc --prune now   git gc --aggressive --prune now   That still didn t work for me   I am currently at git version 1 7 6 1     du -sh  git    gt  e g  100M   Not sure why  since I only had ONE master branch  Anyways  I finally got my git repo truely cleaned up by pushing into a new empty and bare git repository  e g     git init --bare  path to newcleanrepo git   git push  path to newcleanrepo git master   du -sh  path to newcleanrepo git    gt  e g  5M     yes    Then I clone that to a new directory and moved over it s  git folder into this one  e g     mv  git    large dot git   git clone  path to newcleanrepo git    tmpdir   mv    tmpdir  git     du -sh  git    gt  e g  5M     yeah  finally cleaned up    After verifying that all is well  then you can delete the    large dot git and    tmpdir directories  maybe in a couple weeks or month from now  just in case

User · Answer

This is what git filter-branch was designed for

User · Answer

Intro  You Have 5 Solutions Available  The original poster states      I accidentally committed an unwanted file   to my repository several commits    ago   I want to completely delete the file from the repository history        Is it    possible to rewrite the change history such that filename orig was never    added to the repository in the first place    There are many different ways to remove the history of a file completely from git    Amending commits  Hard resets  possibly plus a rebase   Non-interactive rebase  Interactive rebases  Filtering branches    In the case of the original poster  amending the commit isn t really an option by itself  since he made several additional commits afterwards  but for the sake of completeness  I will also explain how to do it  for anyone else who justs wants to amend their previous commit   Note that all of these solutions involve altering re-writing history commits in one way another  so anyone with old copies of the commits will have to do extra work to re-sync their history with the new history     Solution 1  Amending Commits  If you accidentally made a change  such as adding a file  in your previous commit  and you don t want the history of that change to exist anymore  then you can simply amend the previous commit to remove the file from it   git rm  lt file gt  git commit --amend --no-edit     Solution 2  Hard Reset  Possibly Plus a Rebase   Like solution  1  if you just want to get rid of your previous commit  then you also have the option of simply doing a hard reset to its parent   git reset --hard HEAD    That command will hard-reset your branch to the previous 1st parent commit   However  if  like the original poster  you ve made several commits after the commit you want to undo the change to  you can still use hard resets to modify it  but doing so also involves using a rebase  Here are the steps that you can use to amend a commit further back in history     Create a new branch at the commit you want to amend git checkout -b temp  lt commit gt     Amend the commit git rm  lt file gt  git commit --amend --no-edit    Rebase your previous branch onto this new commit  starting from the old-commit git rebase --preserve-merges --onto temp  lt old-commit gt  master    Verify your changes git diff master  1      Solution 3  Non-interactive Rebase  This will work if you just want to remove a commit from history entirely     Create a new branch at the parent-commit of the commit that you want to remove git branch temp  lt parent-commit gt     Rebase onto the parent-commit  starting from the commit-to-remove git rebase --preserve-merges --onto temp  lt commit-to-remove gt  master    Or use  -p  insteda of the longer  --preserve-merges  git rebase -p --onto temp  lt commit-to-remove gt  master    Verify your changes git diff master  1      Solution 4  Interactive Rebases  This solution will allow you to accomplish the same things as solutions  2 and  3  i e  modify or remove commits further back in history than your immediately previous commit  so which solution you choose to use is sort of up to you  Interactive rebases are not well-suited to rebasing hundreds of commits  for performance reasons  so I would use non-interactive rebases or the filter branch solution  see below  in those sort of situations   To begin the interactive rebase  use the following   git rebase --interactive  lt commit-to-amend-or-remove gt      Or  -i  instead of the longer  --interactive  git rebase -i  lt commit-to-amend-or-remove gt     This will cause git to rewind the commit history back to the parent of the commit that you want to modify or remove  It will then present you a list of the rewound commits in reverse order in whatever editor git is set to use  this is Vim by default    pick 00ddaac Add symlinks for executables pick 03fa071 Set  push default  to  simple  pick 7668f34 Modify Bash config to use Homebrew recommended PATH pick 475593a Add global  gitignore file for OS X pick 1b7f496 Add alias for Dr Java to Bash config  OS X    The commit that you want to modify or remove will be at the top of this list  To remove it  simply delete its line in the list  Otherwise  replace  pick  with  edit  on the 1st line  like so   edit 00ddaac Add symlinks for executables pick 03fa071 Set  push default  to  simple    Next  enter git rebase --continue  If you chose to remove the commit entirely  then that it all you need to do  other than verification  see final step for this solution   If  on the other hand  you wanted to modify the commit  then git will reapply the commit and then pause the rebase   Stopped at 00ddaacab0a85d9989217dd9fe9e1b317ed069ac    Add symlinks You can amend the commit now  with          git commit --amend  Once you are satisfied with your changes  run          git rebase --continue   At this point  you can remove the file and amend the commit  then continue the rebase   git rm  lt file gt  git commit --amend --no-edit git rebase --continue   That s it  As a final step  whether you modified the commit or removed it completely  it s always a good idea to verify that no other unexpected changes were made to your branch by diffing it with its state before the rebase   git diff master  1      Solution 5  Filtering Branches  Finally  this solution is best if you want to completely wipe out all traces of a file s existence from history  and none of the other solutions are quite up to the task   git filter-branch --index-filter    git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch  lt file gt     That will remove  lt file gt  from all commits  starting from the root commit  If instead you just want to rewrite the commit range HEAD 5  HEAD  then you can pass that as an additional argument to filter-branch  as pointed out in this answer   git filter-branch --index-filter    git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch  lt file gt   HEAD 5  HEAD   Again  after the filter-branch is complete  it s usually a good idea to verify that there are no other unexpected changes by diffing your branch with its previous state before the filtering operation   git diff master  1      Filter-Branch Alternative  BFG Repo Cleaner  I ve heard that the BFG Repo Cleaner tool runs faster than git filter-branch  so you might want to check that out as an option too  It s even mentioned officially in the filter-branch documentation as a viable alternative      git-filter-branch allows you to make complex shell-scripted rewrites   of your Git history  but you probably don   t need this flexibility if   you   re simply removing unwanted data like large files or passwords    For those operations you may want to consider The BFG   Repo-Cleaner  a JVM-based   alternative to git-filter-branch  typically at least 10-50x faster for   those use-cases  and with quite different characteristics          Any particular version of a file is cleaned exactly once  The BFG  unlike git-filter-branch  does not give you the opportunity to handle   a file differently based on where or when it was committed within your   history  This constraint gives the core performance benefit of The   BFG  and is well-suited to the task of cleansing bad data - you don   t   care where the bad data is  you just want it gone    By default The BFG takes full advantage of multi-core machines  cleansing commit file-trees in parallel  git-filter-branch cleans   commits sequentially  ie in a single-threaded manner   though it is   possible to write filters that include their own parallellism  in the   scripts executed against each commit    The command options are much   more restrictive than git-filter branch  and dedicated just to the   tasks of removing unwanted data- e g  --strip-blobs-bigger-than 1M       Additional Resources   Pro Git  sect  6 4 Git Tools - Rewriting History  git-filter-branch 1  Manual Page  git-commit 1  Manual Page  git-reset 1  Manual Page  git-rebase 1  Manual Page  The BFG Repo Cleaner  see also this answer from the creator himself

User · Answer

This is what git filter-branch was designed for

User · Answer

The simplest way I found was suggested by leontalbot  as a comment   which is a post published by Anoopjohn  I think its worth its own space as an answer    I converted it to a bash script      bin bash if     1           then     echo  Usage   0 FILE OR DIR  remote        echo  FILE OR DIR  the file or directory you want to remove from history      echo  if  remote  argument is set  it will also push to remote repository       exit  fi FOLDERNAME OR FILENAME  1    The important part starts here  ------------------------  git filter-branch -f --index-filter  git rm -rf --cached --ignore-unmatch  FOLDERNAME OR FILENAME  -- --all rm -rf  git refs original  git reflog expire --expire now --all git gc --prune now git gc --aggressive --prune now  if     2     remote      then     git push --all --force fi echo  Done     All credits goes to Annopjohn  and to leontalbot for pointing it out   NOTE  Be aware that the script doesn t include validations  so be sure you don t make mistakes and that you have a backup in case something goes wrong  It worked for me  but it may not work in your situation  USE IT WITH CAUTION  follow the link if you want to know what is going on

User · Answer

You can also use   git reset HEAD file path

User · Answer

Please don t use this recipe if your situation is not the one described in the question  This recipe is for fixing a bad merge  and replaying your good commits onto a fixed merge   Although filter-branch will do what you want  it is quite a complex command and I would probably choose to do this with git rebase  It s probably a personal preference  filter-branch can do it in a single  slightly more complex command  whereas the rebase solution is performing the equivalent logical operations one step at a time   Try the following recipe     create and check out a temporary branch at the location of the bad merge git checkout -b tmpfix  lt sha1-of-merge gt     remove the incorrectly added file git rm somefile orig    commit the amended merge git commit --amend    go back to the master branch git checkout master    replant the master branch onto the corrected merge git rebase tmpfix    delete the temporary branch git branch -d tmpfix    Note that you don t actually need a temporary branch  you can do this with a  detached HEAD   but you need to take a note of the commit id generated by the git commit --amend step to supply to the git rebase command rather than using the temporary branch name

User · Answer

If it s the latest commit you want to clean up  I tried with git version 2 14 3  Apple Git-98    touch empty git init git add empty git commit -m init    92K    git du -hs  git  dd if  dev random of   random bs 1m count 5 git add random git commit -m mistake    5 1M   git du -hs  git  git reset --hard HEAD  git reflog expire --expire now --all git gc --prune now    92K    git du -hs  git

User · Answer

Rewriting Git history demands changing all the affected commit ids  and so everyone who s working on the project will need to delete their old copies of the repo  and do a fresh clone after you ve cleaned the history  The more people it inconveniences  the more you need a good reason to do it - your superfluous file isn t really causing a problem  but if only you are working on the project  you might as well clean up the Git history if you want to   To make it as easy as possible  I d recommend using the BFG Repo-Cleaner  a simpler  faster alternative to git-filter-branch specifically designed for removing files from Git history  One way in which it makes your life easier here is that it actually handles all refs by default  all tags  branches  etc  but it s also 10 - 50x faster   You should carefully follow the steps here  http   rtyley github com bfg-repo-cleaner  usage - but the core bit is just this  download the BFG jar  requires Java 6 or above  and run this command     java -jar bfg jar --delete-files filename orig my-repo git   Your entire repository history will be scanned  and any file named filename orig  that s not in your latest commit  will be removed  This is considerably easier than using git-filter-branch to do the same thing   Full disclosure  I m the author of the BFG Repo-Cleaner

User · Answer

Definitely  git filter-branch is the way to go   Sadly  this will not suffice to completely remove filename orig from your repo  as it can be still be referenced by tags  reflog entries  remotes and so on   I recommend removing all these references as well  and then calling the garbage collector  You can use the git forget-blob script from this website to do all this in one step   git forget-blob filename orig

User · Answer

You should probably clone your repository first   Remove your file from all branches history  git filter-branch --tree-filter  rm -f filename orig  -- --all  Remove your file just from the current branch  git filter-branch --tree-filter  rm -f filename orig  -- --HEAD      Lastly you should run to remove empty commits  git filter-branch -f --prune-empty -- --all

User · Answer

If you haven t committed anything since  just git rm the file and git commit --amend  If you have git filter-branch   --index-filter  git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch path to file filename orig  merge-point  HEAD  will go through each change from merge-point to HEAD  delete filename orig and rewrite the change   Using --ignore-unmatch means the command won t fail if for some reason filename orig is missing from a change   That s the recommended way from the Examples section in the git-filter-branch man page  Note for Windows users  The file path must use forward slashes

User · Answer

Just to add that to Charles Bailey s solution  I just used a git rebase -i to remove unwanted files from an earlier commit and it worked like a charm   The steps     Pick your commit with  e    git rebase -i    Perform as many removes as necessary   git rm project code file txt    amend the commit   git commit --amend    continue with rebase   git rebase --continue

User · Answer

If it s the latest commit you want to clean up  I tried with git version 2 14 3  Apple Git-98    touch empty git init git add empty git commit -m init    92K    git du -hs  git  dd if  dev random of   random bs 1m count 5 git add random git commit -m mistake    5 1M   git du -hs  git  git reset --hard HEAD  git reflog expire --expire now --all git gc --prune now    92K    git du -hs  git

User · Answer

Rewriting Git history demands changing all the affected commit ids  and so everyone who s working on the project will need to delete their old copies of the repo  and do a fresh clone after you ve cleaned the history  The more people it inconveniences  the more you need a good reason to do it - your superfluous file isn t really causing a problem  but if only you are working on the project  you might as well clean up the Git history if you want to   To make it as easy as possible  I d recommend using the BFG Repo-Cleaner  a simpler  faster alternative to git-filter-branch specifically designed for removing files from Git history  One way in which it makes your life easier here is that it actually handles all refs by default  all tags  branches  etc  but it s also 10 - 50x faster   You should carefully follow the steps here  http   rtyley github com bfg-repo-cleaner  usage - but the core bit is just this  download the BFG jar  requires Java 6 or above  and run this command     java -jar bfg jar --delete-files filename orig my-repo git   Your entire repository history will be scanned  and any file named filename orig  that s not in your latest commit  will be removed  This is considerably easier than using git-filter-branch to do the same thing   Full disclosure  I m the author of the BFG Repo-Cleaner

User · Answer

Definitely  git filter-branch is the way to go   Sadly  this will not suffice to completely remove filename orig from your repo  as it can be still be referenced by tags  reflog entries  remotes and so on   I recommend removing all these references as well  and then calling the garbage collector  You can use the git forget-blob script from this website to do all this in one step   git forget-blob filename orig

User · Answer

The simplest way I found was suggested by leontalbot  as a comment   which is a post published by Anoopjohn  I think its worth its own space as an answer    I converted it to a bash script      bin bash if     1           then     echo  Usage   0 FILE OR DIR  remote        echo  FILE OR DIR  the file or directory you want to remove from history      echo  if  remote  argument is set  it will also push to remote repository       exit  fi FOLDERNAME OR FILENAME  1    The important part starts here  ------------------------  git filter-branch -f --index-filter  git rm -rf --cached --ignore-unmatch  FOLDERNAME OR FILENAME  -- --all rm -rf  git refs original  git reflog expire --expire now --all git gc --prune now git gc --aggressive --prune now  if     2     remote      then     git push --all --force fi echo  Done     All credits goes to Annopjohn  and to leontalbot for pointing it out   NOTE  Be aware that the script doesn t include validations  so be sure you don t make mistakes and that you have a backup in case something goes wrong  It worked for me  but it may not work in your situation  USE IT WITH CAUTION  follow the link if you want to know what is going on

User · Answer

Please don t use this recipe if your situation is not the one described in the question  This recipe is for fixing a bad merge  and replaying your good commits onto a fixed merge   Although filter-branch will do what you want  it is quite a complex command and I would probably choose to do this with git rebase  It s probably a personal preference  filter-branch can do it in a single  slightly more complex command  whereas the rebase solution is performing the equivalent logical operations one step at a time   Try the following recipe     create and check out a temporary branch at the location of the bad merge git checkout -b tmpfix  lt sha1-of-merge gt     remove the incorrectly added file git rm somefile orig    commit the amended merge git commit --amend    go back to the master branch git checkout master    replant the master branch onto the corrected merge git rebase tmpfix    delete the temporary branch git branch -d tmpfix    Note that you don t actually need a temporary branch  you can do this with a  detached HEAD   but you need to take a note of the commit id generated by the git commit --amend step to supply to the git rebase command rather than using the temporary branch name

User · Answer

This is what git filter-branch was designed for

User · Answer

You should probably clone your repository first   Remove your file from all branches history  git filter-branch --tree-filter  rm -f filename orig  -- --all  Remove your file just from the current branch  git filter-branch --tree-filter  rm -f filename orig  -- --HEAD      Lastly you should run to remove empty commits  git filter-branch -f --prune-empty -- --all

User · Answer

You can also use   git reset HEAD file path

User · Answer

Please don t use this recipe if your situation is not the one described in the question  This recipe is for fixing a bad merge  and replaying your good commits onto a fixed merge   Although filter-branch will do what you want  it is quite a complex command and I would probably choose to do this with git rebase  It s probably a personal preference  filter-branch can do it in a single  slightly more complex command  whereas the rebase solution is performing the equivalent logical operations one step at a time   Try the following recipe     create and check out a temporary branch at the location of the bad merge git checkout -b tmpfix  lt sha1-of-merge gt     remove the incorrectly added file git rm somefile orig    commit the amended merge git commit --amend    go back to the master branch git checkout master    replant the master branch onto the corrected merge git rebase tmpfix    delete the temporary branch git branch -d tmpfix    Note that you don t actually need a temporary branch  you can do this with a  detached HEAD   but you need to take a note of the commit id generated by the git commit --amend step to supply to the git rebase command rather than using the temporary branch name

User · Answer

Please don t use this recipe if your situation is not the one described in the question  This recipe is for fixing a bad merge  and replaying your good commits onto a fixed merge   Although filter-branch will do what you want  it is quite a complex command and I would probably choose to do this with git rebase  It s probably a personal preference  filter-branch can do it in a single  slightly more complex command  whereas the rebase solution is performing the equivalent logical operations one step at a time   Try the following recipe     create and check out a temporary branch at the location of the bad merge git checkout -b tmpfix  lt sha1-of-merge gt     remove the incorrectly added file git rm somefile orig    commit the amended merge git commit --amend    go back to the master branch git checkout master    replant the master branch onto the corrected merge git rebase tmpfix    delete the temporary branch git branch -d tmpfix    Note that you don t actually need a temporary branch  you can do this with a  detached HEAD   but you need to take a note of the commit id generated by the git commit --amend step to supply to the git rebase command rather than using the temporary branch name

User · Answer

If you haven t committed anything since  just git rm the file and git commit --amend  If you have git filter-branch   --index-filter  git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch path to file filename orig  merge-point  HEAD  will go through each change from merge-point to HEAD  delete filename orig and rewrite the change   Using --ignore-unmatch means the command won t fail if for some reason filename orig is missing from a change   That s the recommended way from the Examples section in the git-filter-branch man page  Note for Windows users  The file path must use forward slashes

User · Answer

This is what git filter-branch was designed for

User · Answer

This is the best way  http   github com guides completely-remove-a-file-from-all-revisions   Just be sure to backup the copies of the files first   EDIT  The edit by Neon got unfortunately rejected during review  See Neons post below  it might contain useful information     E g  to remove all   gz files accidentally committed into git repository     du -sh  git    gt  e g  100M   git filter-branch --index-filter  git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch   gz  HEAD   git push origin master --force   rm -rf  git refs original    git reflog expire --expire now --all   git gc --prune now   git gc --aggressive --prune now   That still didn t work for me   I am currently at git version 1 7 6 1     du -sh  git    gt  e g  100M   Not sure why  since I only had ONE master branch  Anyways  I finally got my git repo truely cleaned up by pushing into a new empty and bare git repository  e g     git init --bare  path to newcleanrepo git   git push  path to newcleanrepo git master   du -sh  path to newcleanrepo git    gt  e g  5M     yes    Then I clone that to a new directory and moved over it s  git folder into this one  e g     mv  git    large dot git   git clone  path to newcleanrepo git    tmpdir   mv    tmpdir  git     du -sh  git    gt  e g  5M     yeah  finally cleaned up    After verifying that all is well  then you can delete the    large dot git and    tmpdir directories  maybe in a couple weeks or month from now  just in case

User · Answer

Just to add that to Charles Bailey s solution  I just used a git rebase -i to remove unwanted files from an earlier commit and it worked like a charm   The steps     Pick your commit with  e    git rebase -i    Perform as many removes as necessary   git rm project code file txt    amend the commit   git commit --amend    continue with rebase   git rebase --continue

User · Answer

Intro  You Have 5 Solutions Available  The original poster states      I accidentally committed an unwanted file   to my repository several commits    ago   I want to completely delete the file from the repository history        Is it    possible to rewrite the change history such that filename orig was never    added to the repository in the first place    There are many different ways to remove the history of a file completely from git    Amending commits  Hard resets  possibly plus a rebase   Non-interactive rebase  Interactive rebases  Filtering branches    In the case of the original poster  amending the commit isn t really an option by itself  since he made several additional commits afterwards  but for the sake of completeness  I will also explain how to do it  for anyone else who justs wants to amend their previous commit   Note that all of these solutions involve altering re-writing history commits in one way another  so anyone with old copies of the commits will have to do extra work to re-sync their history with the new history     Solution 1  Amending Commits  If you accidentally made a change  such as adding a file  in your previous commit  and you don t want the history of that change to exist anymore  then you can simply amend the previous commit to remove the file from it   git rm  lt file gt  git commit --amend --no-edit     Solution 2  Hard Reset  Possibly Plus a Rebase   Like solution  1  if you just want to get rid of your previous commit  then you also have the option of simply doing a hard reset to its parent   git reset --hard HEAD    That command will hard-reset your branch to the previous 1st parent commit   However  if  like the original poster  you ve made several commits after the commit you want to undo the change to  you can still use hard resets to modify it  but doing so also involves using a rebase  Here are the steps that you can use to amend a commit further back in history     Create a new branch at the commit you want to amend git checkout -b temp  lt commit gt     Amend the commit git rm  lt file gt  git commit --amend --no-edit    Rebase your previous branch onto this new commit  starting from the old-commit git rebase --preserve-merges --onto temp  lt old-commit gt  master    Verify your changes git diff master  1      Solution 3  Non-interactive Rebase  This will work if you just want to remove a commit from history entirely     Create a new branch at the parent-commit of the commit that you want to remove git branch temp  lt parent-commit gt     Rebase onto the parent-commit  starting from the commit-to-remove git rebase --preserve-merges --onto temp  lt commit-to-remove gt  master    Or use  -p  insteda of the longer  --preserve-merges  git rebase -p --onto temp  lt commit-to-remove gt  master    Verify your changes git diff master  1      Solution 4  Interactive Rebases  This solution will allow you to accomplish the same things as solutions  2 and  3  i e  modify or remove commits further back in history than your immediately previous commit  so which solution you choose to use is sort of up to you  Interactive rebases are not well-suited to rebasing hundreds of commits  for performance reasons  so I would use non-interactive rebases or the filter branch solution  see below  in those sort of situations   To begin the interactive rebase  use the following   git rebase --interactive  lt commit-to-amend-or-remove gt      Or  -i  instead of the longer  --interactive  git rebase -i  lt commit-to-amend-or-remove gt     This will cause git to rewind the commit history back to the parent of the commit that you want to modify or remove  It will then present you a list of the rewound commits in reverse order in whatever editor git is set to use  this is Vim by default    pick 00ddaac Add symlinks for executables pick 03fa071 Set  push default  to  simple  pick 7668f34 Modify Bash config to use Homebrew recommended PATH pick 475593a Add global  gitignore file for OS X pick 1b7f496 Add alias for Dr Java to Bash config  OS X    The commit that you want to modify or remove will be at the top of this list  To remove it  simply delete its line in the list  Otherwise  replace  pick  with  edit  on the 1st line  like so   edit 00ddaac Add symlinks for executables pick 03fa071 Set  push default  to  simple    Next  enter git rebase --continue  If you chose to remove the commit entirely  then that it all you need to do  other than verification  see final step for this solution   If  on the other hand  you wanted to modify the commit  then git will reapply the commit and then pause the rebase   Stopped at 00ddaacab0a85d9989217dd9fe9e1b317ed069ac    Add symlinks You can amend the commit now  with          git commit --amend  Once you are satisfied with your changes  run          git rebase --continue   At this point  you can remove the file and amend the commit  then continue the rebase   git rm  lt file gt  git commit --amend --no-edit git rebase --continue   That s it  As a final step  whether you modified the commit or removed it completely  it s always a good idea to verify that no other unexpected changes were made to your branch by diffing it with its state before the rebase   git diff master  1      Solution 5  Filtering Branches  Finally  this solution is best if you want to completely wipe out all traces of a file s existence from history  and none of the other solutions are quite up to the task   git filter-branch --index-filter    git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch  lt file gt     That will remove  lt file gt  from all commits  starting from the root commit  If instead you just want to rewrite the commit range HEAD 5  HEAD  then you can pass that as an additional argument to filter-branch  as pointed out in this answer   git filter-branch --index-filter    git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch  lt file gt   HEAD 5  HEAD   Again  after the filter-branch is complete  it s usually a good idea to verify that there are no other unexpected changes by diffing your branch with its previous state before the filtering operation   git diff master  1      Filter-Branch Alternative  BFG Repo Cleaner  I ve heard that the BFG Repo Cleaner tool runs faster than git filter-branch  so you might want to check that out as an option too  It s even mentioned officially in the filter-branch documentation as a viable alternative      git-filter-branch allows you to make complex shell-scripted rewrites   of your Git history  but you probably don   t need this flexibility if   you   re simply removing unwanted data like large files or passwords    For those operations you may want to consider The BFG   Repo-Cleaner  a JVM-based   alternative to git-filter-branch  typically at least 10-50x faster for   those use-cases  and with quite different characteristics          Any particular version of a file is cleaned exactly once  The BFG  unlike git-filter-branch  does not give you the opportunity to handle   a file differently based on where or when it was committed within your   history  This constraint gives the core performance benefit of The   BFG  and is well-suited to the task of cleansing bad data - you don   t   care where the bad data is  you just want it gone    By default The BFG takes full advantage of multi-core machines  cleansing commit file-trees in parallel  git-filter-branch cleans   commits sequentially  ie in a single-threaded manner   though it is   possible to write filters that include their own parallellism  in the   scripts executed against each commit    The command options are much   more restrictive than git-filter branch  and dedicated just to the   tasks of removing unwanted data- e g  --strip-blobs-bigger-than 1M       Additional Resources   Pro Git  sect  6 4 Git Tools - Rewriting History  git-filter-branch 1  Manual Page  git-commit 1  Manual Page  git-reset 1  Manual Page  git-rebase 1  Manual Page  The BFG Repo Cleaner  see also this answer from the creator himself

[git] How do you fix a bad merge, and replay your good commits onto a fixed merge?

Examples related to git

Examples related to git-filter-branch

Examples related to git-rewrite-history

Examples related to git-rm