I noticed recently that the project files my text editors use (along with some other junk) got added the git repository for the project. Since they aren't actually part of the project, I'd like to remove them, but git rm
doesnt remove the old versions from the repository, and I couldnt find anything else that looks promising.
The git rm command can be used to remove individual files or a collection of files. The primary function of git rm is to remove tracked files from the Git index. Additionally, git rm can be used to remove files from both the staging index and the working directory.
The tool you want is git filter-branch
. Its usage is described here, but basically:
$ git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -f my_file' HEAD
will remove "my_file" from every commit.
Notice that this rewrites every commit, so if you push into a remote repository, you have to (a) force the update, and (b) everyone else who pulled from you will now have duplicate commits (since you rewrote the history), as described on the git rebase
man page.
This is what git filter-branch
is for, but beware that your repo history will change, and the commit hashes will be different after history rewrite.
If you also want to free the space, I recommend that you use git forget-blob
, because git filter-branch
alone will not make git forget your file, as it may still be referenced by remotes, reflog, tags and such.
git forget-blob main.c.swp
You can get more information here
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