[git] git rm - fatal: pathspec did not match any files

I added over 9000 photos by accident to my project folder. And committed them. Then deleted them from disk. Committed.

Now I try to push changes to git server. But it takes too long and tries to send 12 Gb of data.

I checked files size on disk and see that really .git folder takes 12 Gb.

How to delete photos from there? I tried git rm, but fails:

? git rm public/photos
fatal: pathspec 'public/photos' did not match any files

Because I allready deleted them from disk, but they are still in .git folder.

I tried to add public/photos to .gitignore:

public/photos/
*.zip

But no result. Of course I could hard reset head to moment when I did not have so many junk photos in my project. But since that time i committed many times and made a lot changes in code.

Step 1

Add the file name(s) to your .gitignore file.

Step 2

git filter-branch --force --index-filter \
    'git rm -r --cached --ignore-unmatch YOURFILE' \
    --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all

Step 3

git push -f origin branch

A big thank you to @mu.

using this worked for me

git rm -f --cached <filename>

This chains work in my case:

1. git rm -r WebApplication/packages

There was a confirmation git-dialog. You should choose "y" option.

2. git commit -m "blabla"
3. git push -f origin <ur_branch>

I had a duplicate directory (~web/web) and it removed the nested duplicate when I ran rm -rf web while inside the first web folder.

A very simple answer is.

Step 1:

Firstly add your untracked files to which you want to delete:

using git add . or git add <filename>.

Step 2:

Then delete them easily using command git rm -f <filename> here rm=remove and -f=forcely.

git stash 

did the job, It restored the files that I had deleted using rm instead of git rm.

I did first a checkout of the last hash, but I do not believe it is required.

To remove the tracked and old committed file from git you can use the below command. Here in my case, I want to untrack and remove all the file from dist directory.

git filter-branch --force --index-filter 'git rm -r --cached --ignore-unmatch dist' --tag-name-filter cat -- --all

Then, you need to add it into your .gitignore so it won't be tracked further.